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Author Topic:   Vampires dont' breathe!!!!1
MonSTeR
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posted 02-06-2000 11:36 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Spike has said so in "black and white" in Lover's walk. Angel said he "doesn't need the oxygen"

Therefore Vampires don't breathe

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Vox
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posted 03-06-2000 12:22 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Are you saying they don't breathe or that they can't breathe?

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MonSTeR
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posted 03-06-2000 12:43 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
That they don't need to breathe and therefore have no requirement for oxygen.

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Vox
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posted 03-06-2000 11:39 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
No argument here. Except you can't conclude that they don't need oxygen simply from the fact that they don't need to breathe. They could get it through other means.

(Though you've got me on what those might be )

[This message has been edited by Vox (edited 03-06-2000).]

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MonSTeR
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posted 03-06-2000 01:51 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Angel has said that he doesn't need oxygen. (in the one with the invisible girl, the episode name I can't remember)

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Vox
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posted 03-06-2000 07:25 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Would that episode be... Invisible Girl by any chance?

And all that line proves is that Angel doesn't think he needs the oxygen. While, admittedly, he's in a better position than I am to work out vampire metaphysiology, he simply might not be aware that of how his body receives the oxygen. He may have just assumed that, because he doesn't need to breathe, he doesn't need oxygen. It has been suggested, for example, that vampires might get their oxygen from that which is in the blood they drink. If that were the case, Angel might be completely unaware. After all, it's not like he's gone around working out how vampires tick.

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MonSTeR
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posted 03-06-2000 07:59 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Yeah Invisible Girl that's the one

I don't know about the oxygen thing. I mean if I'd had 225 years or so to figure it out I'm sure I'd have tried to see just what I was capable of and whether or not I needed oxygen. As for the oxygen in the blood that they feed on, well I for one don't buy that one. But then I'm just a MonSTeR.

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MonSTeR
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posted 03-06-2000 08:01 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
I mean to get oxygen from the blood that they drink is one HECK of a physiological adaptation. I'm going to stick with a "not needing oxygen at all" viewpoint for now.

[This message has been edited by MonSTeR (edited 03-06-2000).]

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Vox
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posted 03-06-2000 09:39 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
And not needing oxygen at all is a _smaller_ physiological adaption?

[This message has been edited by Vox (edited 03-06-2000).]

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MonSTeR
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posted 03-06-2000 11:32 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Well in a "dead" being, such as a Vampire is supposed to be, there is no physiological adaptation as.....


dead things don't need oxygen anyway

Here we are dancing in circles over the dead/alive thing again. We should just find Joss, wherever he is, tie 'im up and torture 'im until he gives us some straight answers

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Vox
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posted 04-06-2000 12:06 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by MonSTeR:
Well in a "dead" being, such as a Vampire is supposed to be, there is no physiological adaptation as.....

But dead beings don't walk around, talk and and be able to enlarge their craniums at will, so I think some physiological adaption has taken place. It's not just a reanimation, it's an alteration as well.

I would agree with you about Joss but it appears he's more ignorant than the rest of us...

--------------------------------
Interview with Joss Whedon
Courtesy of Entertainment Tonight online

Amy: Why does Angel always get out of breath when he's "suffering," but it's repeatedly said on the shows that vampires don't breathe?

Joss: What Angel said was that Xander had to give Buffy CPR, because, as he put it, "I have no breath." That meant that he had no life to breathe in to Buffy, it didn't mean that he couldn't get winded. He meant that what comes out of him does not make the trees grow...
----------------------------

So, Joss muddies the waters further by introducing the idea that vampires do 'breathe' but the stuff that comes out of their mouth isn't healthy enough to do CPR.

re: the trees. Does he mean oxygen or carbon dioxide? Because trees and all plant life uses both to grow (as they both photosynthesise and respire). And Angel only needs to breathe out oxygen to do CPR which is in the air anyway. So is Joss saying that vampires somehow filter the oxygen out of the air when they breathe it?

It seems that Joss doesn't only suck at math...

He's just winging it as he goes along, if we wanted some consistency and rational underpinnings we should have gotten someone like Asimov in.

And, may I just add, that I think this has got to be a record for the longest thread between just two people.

MonSTeR and Vox rule this thread!

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MonSTeR
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posted 04-06-2000 12:56 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Heck we've been here so long I was thinking maybe we should redecorate?!?!!?

And for CPR it's CO2 rather than O2 I think, something to do with CO2 raising the acidity level of the blood next to the lungs that makes them involuntarily move the muscles again!

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Vox
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posted 04-06-2000 09:29 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by MonSTeR:
And for CPR it's CO2 rather than O2 I think, something to do with CO2 raising the acidity level of the blood next to the lungs that makes them involuntarily move the muscles again!

That's interesting, but still, there's CO2 in the air (admittedly a smaller concentration).

So, Dr. MonSTeR, presumably for Buffy to die her heart would have stopped. Did Xander do any chest compressions? If he didn't, can you restart a heart simply through mouth2mouth?

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MonSTeR
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posted 04-06-2000 01:13 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Well co2 that Xander would breathe out would be a higher concentration than in the air which is the important bit cos that's the way to raise the acidity by getting MORE co2 into the blood which forms an acid there which in turn stimulates a bunch of chemoreceptors and messes with some baroreceptors which I suppose would then send a stimulus to the cardio-accelatory centre in the medulla oblongata to increase the heartbeat which may get the heart beating again?!?!?! I thought the compressions were to keep the blood recirculating and thus keep the blood chemistry right for breathing rather than to physically restart the heart???
But I did my PhD in genetics not medicine so???????

[This message has been edited by MonSTeR (edited 04-06-2000).]

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Vox
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posted 04-06-2000 01:48 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Well, closest I've come is a First Aid course where they just tell you what to do, not why it works...

The difference in CO2 is the most convincing explanation I've heard (what Joss said was off in his own little world).

But yep, I agree, vampires don't need to breathe. They can breathe if they wish.

Still think the oxygen question is up in the air, but that leads on to issues of where vampires get their energy. Is it from the blood (i.e. the blood serves as their food) or does the blood merely facilitate an internal reaction (such as the oil in a car engine) of some sort of demonic battery?

Because we need oxygen in order to respire and convert matter to energy, if the vampires don't need oxygen they're either respiring anaerobically (i.e. without the oxygen) which is far less efficient (and vampires seem to get a lot more sustenance from blood, as they feed a lot less, than we could) or they have a completely separate method a la the 'demon battery' theory.

Vampires get far more sustenance from blood even than aerobic respiration could provide so I'm thinking the demon battery might be along the right lines. Here, though, we run into problems of the conservation of energy.

I thought of two solutions (well, one solution and one cop out)

1. the vampire uses the host body itself as a source of energy until the point that it is only the mystical force animating the body that keeps it together. Hence the 'dusting' when that mystical force is broken. However this doesn't explain why new-borns collapse into dust, even faster than the older ones.

So that one won't fly.

2. The demon battery gets its energy from a different dimension (e.g. the dimension that the demon was called from). Therefore each vampire has a sort of mystic umbilical cord leading back to the demon dimension which provides its power. The blood is needed, for some reason, to keep this cord in operation (which is not that unlikely as it seems most mystic spells require blood of some kind). Each 'feeding' is in fact a ritual sustaining the efficiency of a spell of sorts rather than the sustenance itself.

As I say, that's getting _around_ the conservation of energy by changing the rules of the game, equivalent of throwing up my hands and saying "It's just magic, alright?".

Still, it could have interesting consequences if you could find someway of cutting a lot of cords at once...

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MonSTeR
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posted 04-06-2000 01:56 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
I will have to agree on the demon magic battery theory With the Blood like a spell ingredient or something??!?!?!

As a MonSTeR of science this is actually the most likely thing I've heard

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MonSTeR
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posted 04-06-2000 02:00 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for MonSTeR   Click Here to Email MonSTeR     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
And I'm not sure whether they can "breathe" if they want cos if the battery thing works then the gaseous exchange is different.

BUT I do think they can "breathe" in as much as they can make the chest expand and suck air in AND get a kick from smoking (indicating a gaseous exchange mechanism and a chemical absorption mechanism exists) and smell stuff etc it's just that the air the breathe out would be chemically pretty much the same air as they breathe in if you see what I mean. (No by products of a human respiratory cycle thingy)

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AxB
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posted 04-06-2000 02:18 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AxB   Click Here to Email AxB     Edit/Delete Message  67978031   Reply w/Quote
But given that they only consume blood, the next question is: Do Vampires have halitosis ?

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Joe
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posted 04-06-2000 03:16 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Joe   Click Here to Email Joe     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Vox:
2. The demon battery gets its energy from a different dimension (e.g. the dimension that the demon was called from). Therefore each vampire has a sort of mystic umbilical cord leading back to the demon dimension which provides its power. The blood is needed, for some reason, to keep this cord in operation (which is not that unlikely as it seems most mystic spells require blood of some kind). Each 'feeding' is in fact a ritual sustaining the efficiency of a spell of sorts rather than the sustenance itself.

As I say, that's getting _around_ the conservation of energy by changing the rules of the game, equivalent of throwing up my hands and saying "It's just magic, alright?".

Still, it could have interesting consequences if you could find someway of cutting a lot of cords at once...


I don't want to seem tetchy (although I do it so well!) but I flew this idea when someone (I think it was Chambler) asked a couple of questions about vampires being destroyed by sunlight, turning into dust and stuff. I proposed that sunlight was powerful enough to destabilise the interdimensional link and dust was a byproduct of the resulting disintegration. I need to unite this with my 'viruses with vertebrae' theory, when I have more time (are you familiar with Swamp Thing's origin?).
There's a tiny problem here, though, connected to the disintegrating stake' issue. If a vamps clothes are dusted along with the vamp *however new they are*, why weren't Cordie and Xander seriously injured when that vampire disintegrated between them (in 'Anne', I think)?
I could believe that Buffy's powers protect her from that kind of stuff, but not ordinary humans.
I probably think too much...

[This message has been edited by Joe (edited 04-06-2000).]

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Vox
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posted 04-06-2000 03:21 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
17 uninterrupted posts over the course of 36 hours. Got to be a record!

MonSTeR Yeah, I get what you mean by breathing. They can _inhale_ and exhale. The absorption of chemicals is a more tricky problem. Vampires don't have a heart-beat, they don't have a pulse so the blood in their pulmonary vein and artery is going to be stationary and only able to absorb chemicals like nicotine until they're saturated. With just the smoking, you can explain it by claiming that Spike (and Angelus) didn't really get a chemical kick, just a psychological one.

However that doesn't work with the alcohol we saw Spike drunk on in Lover's Walk or his description of his 'trip' at Woodstock (with the added complication there that he got high through infected blood).

For all these things to have an affect the chemicals being introduced have to be able to reach the brain. Since they don't have a circulation this led to my concept of 'demon diffusion', a way for chemicals to get around their bodies without the circulatory system. Diffusion would occur through any permiable membrane where the concentrations were different enough, but it's __sloooow__ (which is why we have a circulation to begin with, to speed the process up).

In Ricean vampire lore a vampire who's just fed is warm, the fresh blood he has consumed has gotten all around his body. The blood obviously has some way to get around the body (along with any contaminants). This might work if the Buffyverse vampire veins were essentially empty, but as we've seen there's blood in there, it's just stagnant.


Oh, and the other thought I had about dusting was that perhaps it can be explained with the 'umbilical' theory. When the host is killed the demon is banished back to its dimension and it takes with it the majority of the matter that had been exposed to it's energy (i.e. the body and the clothes) or is caught up with the banishment (e.g. the embedded stake). It could sort of keep it in line with the conservation of energy, the other dimension pours energy into this dimension to animate the vampire, on dusting it takes back the available matter in recompense.

This led me on to the old brain-tickler of the Master's bones. The one special thing about the Master from other vampires was that he had been trapped in a bubble in the Hellmouth for an extended period of time. The prolongued exposure to the energy of hell, or whatever energy constituted the 'cork', the demon energy in his bones might have been either cleaned or tainted (like some sorts of radiation effect the bones) so when he was staked the retreating demon could not/did not take them with it.

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Vox
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posted 04-06-2000 03:35 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Vox   Click Here to Email Vox     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Joe:
(are you familiar with Swamp Thing's origin?).


No, wasn't he the one who came out of a swamp?

quote:
Originally posted by Joe:
There's a tiny problem here, though, connected to the disintegrating stake' issue. If a vamps clothes are dusted along with the vamp *however new they are*, why weren't Cordie and Xander seriously injured when that vampire disintegrated between them (in 'Anne', I think)?

Well, I think a case could be made that there's something about 'living' flesh that means the demonic energy can't operate on it (and therefore won't drag it back with it). There's no other reason why a human has to be drained to the point of death before the demon inhabits their body, the demon needs 'dead' flesh (perhaps also evidenced by how long it takes for the new vamp to arise, the alterations need to be made and the body needs to 'cool').

So why were Xander and Cordelia not naked? It could simply be an extent of contact thing. Their clothes may simply not been in contact with the vampire long enough, or not enough of them, infused with demon energy. After all, if a vampire were just holding a shirt in one hand it wouldn't be dusted with him. If a significant portion of an object is close enough to the vampire when it gets staked then it gets dragged back with them when it gets dusted (similar to Superman's invulnerability which extends a centimetre or so off his body so that his cossie doesn't get ripped or torn or blown off him).

Cordelia and Xander were 'alive' and therefore wouldn't be dragged back, and not enough of their clothing was in contact to be caught.

Perhaps...

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Byron
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posted 04-06-2000 11:59 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Byron   Click Here to Email Byron     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Or perhaps Joss couldn't get two teens hugging naked in a park on before the watershed . . .

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Joe
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posted 05-06-2000 01:47 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for Joe   Click Here to Email Joe     Edit/Delete Message     Reply w/Quote
Wish it *did* work that way, it would make a great party trick at Watcher get-togethers...

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