Vampires, Zompires?

Recently I watched an hour long presentation on the History Channel I beleive. The topic was vampires. Not real vampires, but rather the fictional type. A large amount of them was how they progressed from cold blooded killers, to morally conflicted dark beings, to bleh... sparkling. I have no need to go into more detail past that last one. There were many other phases in there also but those are the main ones that stand out in my mind. You know how every story can be a metaphor for WWII? One of the original Dracula movies back with the black and white was meant to be like that. It didn't look... too.. no, it looked kind of cheesy but back then it was a hit I suppose. When are we going to look back and see what we did, what we listened to and watched, was terrible for media and society will move on? Anyways, the shimmery vampires were the newest and I thought there had to be something better than that here quickly so I threw together some thoughts and developed my own.

Lets start with some facts.

Diseases are contagious. An illness can effect your body in several ways, usually negative. It can make you feel ill, or just take away your energy. An individual turns into a zombie often due to disease. There are many different zombie ideas as well but in general it is due to an infection.

It's stereotypical for a vampire to bite other people, well in most cases vampires bite just people. Once you've reached the vampire state not everyone is willing to accept you as a person. It must be incredibly unfair for those vampires who wish to just be loved.

It is also a common stereotype that vampires don't like the sun. Their skin can react in many ways, but all ways I can think of are negative. Some more than others, bursting into flames isn't so bad.

Vampires are not all that different from zombies. They just have a different strain of a similar disease. Diseases can lower your metabolism and be spread through bodily fluids. If you are bitten by a vampire, there is a high chance of the illness being passed on.. That is if they don't kill you. If they want to do or not it is a good idea in most cases for vampires to do this. Not all may wish to pass on this disease, for various reasons. I don't think I would want many people in my neighborhood being vampires if I was one, it could attract too much attention.

Along with being contagious there is the aspect of metabolism that has already been mentioned. The body shuts down on the most part, keeping itself running at a very slow rate. Instead of living forever, you will happen to live for a much longer than usual time. Growing older happens at a much slower rate with a metabolism low as it will reach.

Paired to this slower aging many internal organs shut down. This stops many normal functions of the body such as creating blood and digestion. Stomach acid is not produced however the stomach will still continue to absorb liquids it intakes. With there being nothing to break down anything that is put into the stomach it goes fairly quickly into the blood stream. With no new blood being created the individual needs a way to get blood, I'm sure you can figure this out. A lack of vitamins is easily fixed with Powerade due to it's already semi-broken down sugars allowing for easy, quick digestion. Skin is made less flexible and cold due to there being many less activities within the body creating heat. This lack of warmth in the skin already causes the sun to be much more intense than it usually would be. There is much less to no pigment produced to help defend against the sun, and any damage done to the body will take longer than usual to heal itself.

A quick note, fangs aren't legitimate, you can break skin with a normal bite force and your every day teeth.

As a body shuts down in the manor it would in this situation, the brain also shuts down slightly. It is brought to a more animal like state. Easily agitated, less social, territorial, and more prone to violent acts instead of talking things out. With less desire to be social, a dislike for the sun, and a more hit first ask questions later attitude it's easy to slip away from society who would likely be suspicious of you due to your appearance. I'm sure it's easy to see why you don't see many vampires about, and how folklore forms around them.