Murder Rooms, Vampires, and Epidemiology
Feb. 10th, 2005 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakSince the beginning of the organized study of murder the rate has mostly fallen. Recently in the United States it was as low as 1.2 per 100,000 in the State of Maine and only 5.7 for the United States as a whole. In large cities the known murder rate is as high as 45 per 100,000 for some inner city areas. On the face of it then it would seem easiest for a population of vampires to live in the inner city and hide their victims among the other murder victims. But on further analysis that might be too quick an assumption.
According to the FBI "In 44.5 percent of murders, the relationship of the murder victim to the offender was unknown. Of the 55.5 percent of murders in which the victim/offender relationship was known, 77.6 percent of the victims knew their assailants." This means that at least 43% of all murders are the interpersonal sort rather than just another anonymous victim turning up in the river or whatever. Plus would the vampire victims be found at all? I suspect that any vampire that survived a long time would not leave his victims about or else he'd stand out as a severe spike in the murder rates of even a large city.
Consider this. If the assumption were made that a vampire needs to feed almost every night but only finishes off a person after a week that's an average of 52 victims a year. Even if he were doing this in downtown D.C. he's be a full 20% of the known murder victims by himself. I think some epidemiologist (people who study diseases in a statistical way, yes even murder, it is a sort of disease after all) would notice if there were a vampire creeping about murdering people in the shadows. But that's just if the vampires are hiding behind murder.
There is limited information available about missing persons as it isn't a crime, per say. However in the states for which I can find statistics the numbers are interesting. In Iowa 7,116 total reported missing, a fair number several times. Of these 6,127 were juveniles and 909 were Adults. At the end of a year only 4% had not been located, with a bit more than half of those being adults. That would seem to offer the possibility of having a lot of people for a vampire to disappear. Some 284 in the state of Iowa with a population of just under 3 million or 9.7 per 100,000, much higher than the murder rate. But according to California they ended up with only 124 out of 27,929 reported as "unknown". Though I do wonder about the 1,172 reported as "voluntarily missing". Is that known or just assumed? After all that number is very close to Iowa's 4% uncleared after a year number.
So what's a vampire to do? Well what if the lurid number of one a week (or one every three days in some traditions) is a bit high? Well blood donation is limited to once every 56 days (eight weeks) for each unit (one pint) of blood. However in the guidelines for autologous donation of blood (for your own use before planned surgery) call for one unit a week for up to six weeks (the limit of blood storage). It would seem then that with sufficient iron intake a donor could survive being food for a vampire provided no more than one unit were taken each week for eight weeks even under conservative numbers. And it might well destroy his health after a year, but if you're a vampire this is no time to get squeamish, but it might be possible to limit yourself to an average of just seven victims a year and that would be a lot easier to hide as various sorts of missing persons or murders than 52. And that's assuming that the vampire needs one donor for every day of the week. The numbers become a lot easier if it is just once a week, no more need to play Casanova every night.
Certainly it seems that in ancient times he could easily hide among other wasting diseases, unexplained disappearances, and just plain old vanilla murder, but in modern times he's not out of the woods yet. After all unless the book is in the tradition of Buffy or Vampire: the Masquerade where people seem to have either enormous powers of denial or the vampires control the government the secret is going to leak out at some point. And then vampires have to worry about packs of government (or other groups) agents with machine guns and mirror shades that keep their mesmeric powers from working.
According to the FBI "In 44.5 percent of murders, the relationship of the murder victim to the offender was unknown. Of the 55.5 percent of murders in which the victim/offender relationship was known, 77.6 percent of the victims knew their assailants." This means that at least 43% of all murders are the interpersonal sort rather than just another anonymous victim turning up in the river or whatever. Plus would the vampire victims be found at all? I suspect that any vampire that survived a long time would not leave his victims about or else he'd stand out as a severe spike in the murder rates of even a large city.
Consider this. If the assumption were made that a vampire needs to feed almost every night but only finishes off a person after a week that's an average of 52 victims a year. Even if he were doing this in downtown D.C. he's be a full 20% of the known murder victims by himself. I think some epidemiologist (people who study diseases in a statistical way, yes even murder, it is a sort of disease after all) would notice if there were a vampire creeping about murdering people in the shadows. But that's just if the vampires are hiding behind murder.
There is limited information available about missing persons as it isn't a crime, per say. However in the states for which I can find statistics the numbers are interesting. In Iowa 7,116 total reported missing, a fair number several times. Of these 6,127 were juveniles and 909 were Adults. At the end of a year only 4% had not been located, with a bit more than half of those being adults. That would seem to offer the possibility of having a lot of people for a vampire to disappear. Some 284 in the state of Iowa with a population of just under 3 million or 9.7 per 100,000, much higher than the murder rate. But according to California they ended up with only 124 out of 27,929 reported as "unknown". Though I do wonder about the 1,172 reported as "voluntarily missing". Is that known or just assumed? After all that number is very close to Iowa's 4% uncleared after a year number.
So what's a vampire to do? Well what if the lurid number of one a week (or one every three days in some traditions) is a bit high? Well blood donation is limited to once every 56 days (eight weeks) for each unit (one pint) of blood. However in the guidelines for autologous donation of blood (for your own use before planned surgery) call for one unit a week for up to six weeks (the limit of blood storage). It would seem then that with sufficient iron intake a donor could survive being food for a vampire provided no more than one unit were taken each week for eight weeks even under conservative numbers. And it might well destroy his health after a year, but if you're a vampire this is no time to get squeamish, but it might be possible to limit yourself to an average of just seven victims a year and that would be a lot easier to hide as various sorts of missing persons or murders than 52. And that's assuming that the vampire needs one donor for every day of the week. The numbers become a lot easier if it is just once a week, no more need to play Casanova every night.
Certainly it seems that in ancient times he could easily hide among other wasting diseases, unexplained disappearances, and just plain old vanilla murder, but in modern times he's not out of the woods yet. After all unless the book is in the tradition of Buffy or Vampire: the Masquerade where people seem to have either enormous powers of denial or the vampires control the government the secret is going to leak out at some point. And then vampires have to worry about packs of government (or other groups) agents with machine guns and mirror shades that keep their mesmeric powers from working.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 01:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 02:31 am (UTC)If vampirism is illegal that's still going to cause a great deal of trouble. I mean how often do you think a person recovers the memory despite the mind games later on? After all you're leaving a lot of people in your wake; some 12775 over a 35 year period. If it fails even just one tenth of one percent of a time that's around one person every two and a half years. How long until one of them gets angry enough to do something about it?
If legal I suspect the mind games would be illegal to roll a person's mind unless consensual and so just as big a problem. Though if a vampire is just good a playing the scene, so to speak, he'd probably be able to have enough one night stands to satisfy the hunger with just vampire groupies.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 03:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 05:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 06:42 am (UTC)This is mildly related...
Have you ever visted www.drinkdeeplyanddream.com ?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 07:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 02:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 03:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 06:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-11 07:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-20 08:08 am (UTC)Or what if it's not food, but some other function? Say :
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6980861/?GT1=6190
In either case, the vampires that get reported or caught tend to be those who go to extremes, equivalent to human gluttons; or those who enjoy torturing their victims.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-20 08:56 am (UTC)Even if they were able to somehow able to limit how much physical blood they took by somehow straining out the magic from it there would still be negative effects upon the person. They'd mysteriously drop dead one day of no apparent physical aliment.
Magic isn't free and so I figured that vampires actually need blood. I derived my numbers on how often a vampire needs a donor from what I thought reasonable for a predator that would not totally overwhelm their prey with dead, but still result in the odd death here and there. Unless vampires can find a way to have willing donors and not have to hide their activities so strictly that it is better to kill a person than let him talk.