Let’s assume that lack of oxygen would not make you pass out or die (imagine an immortal)… what would it do? I would assume dizziness, maybe some other drug like effects… but what would they be. Anyone have any ideas?
I’m thinking that a vampire needs to breathe to operate normally, but would not die without it. I thought maybe it might even become recreational to stop breathing for short periods of time for some sort of buzz, but I don’t know what it would be like.
Speculation? (Yes, for my book)
Last thread for tonight on the topic of my book, I pinky-swear.
Cerebral hypoxia refers to a condition in which there is a decrease of oxygen supply to the brain even though there is adequate blood flow. Drowning, strangling, choking, suffocation, cardiac arrest, head trauma, carbon monoxide poisoning, and complications of general anesthesia can create conditions that can lead to cerebral hypoxia.* Symptoms of mild cerebral hypoxia include inattentiveness, poor judgment, memory loss, and a decrease in motor coordination**. Brain cells are extremely sensitive to oxygen deprivation and can begin to die within five minutes after oxygen supply has been cut off. When hypoxia lasts for longer periods of time, it can cause coma, seizures, and even brain death. In brain death, there is no measurable activity in the brain, although cardiovascular function is preserved. Life support is required for respiration.*
Thanks! That’s good information. I’m going to omit the part about brain cells dying since this is a vampire… any care to speculate on the difference that might make? (It’s fiction, so I can do whatever I want with it, in theory, but I’d like a basis in real biology…)
My friends and I, as teenagers, used to hyperventilate and then cut off blood supply (by pinching the neck arteries) in order to faint. For fun. The idea was to try to remember the “dream” on awakening.
The question doesn’t really make sense. In simple terms the neurons in the brain are food-burning batteries. Remove the oxygen, the food stops burning and the battery goes flat. If it stays flat for too long it can’t be recharged, it’s dead.
If your vampire doesn’t need oxygen then the batteries won’t run down. As a result there won’t be any symptoms at all to not breathing. The loss of concentration and co-ordination is caused by the inability of the neurons to recharge fast enough. It’s all part and parcel of the same process that leads to unconsciousness and brain death. The neurons recharge slower and slower and eventually they don’t recharge at all. If a vampire doesn’t need to breathe to keep the neurons charged then she won’t experience any symptoms at all from lack of oxygen.
Vampires are magical creatures, they work in magical ways. There isn’t any way of producing a vampire that doesn’t need to breathe that has a basis in biology. If you are going to have any symptoms at all from lack of oxygen, the best you can really do is set some arbitrary point at which the process magically stops progressing. Where you set that point is entirely up to you.
I suppose alternatively you can stick with the more common vampire concept, where they can be killed by anything that kills a normal person, but they just don’t stay dead. IOW a suffocating vampire experiences the same symptoms as anyone else, including loss of consciousness and death. But they return to life once conditions become more hospitable or once blood is added to the corpse/ashes.
As **Blake **said, having a brain work without oxygen is magical. So your magic can do whatever you want it to do. It really doesn’t make sense that a creature whose brain worked w/o oxygen would suffer human symptoms when deprived of something it doesn’t need. How does your brain react to being deprived of xenon? Answer: It doesn’t react at all. The presence or absence of xenon makes no difference.
If you want for some reason to mimic human symptomology though, here’s some info & anecdote …
As part of pilot training I’ve been run through the altitude chamber several times. Which includes trying to breath at high altitude & observe how your mind deteriorates before unconsciousness sets in. The goal being to learn to recognize your symptoms so if you ever experience them in flight, you’ll recognize them and get on supplemental oxygen before you’re too stupid to save yourself.
Ballpark it’s like being mildly drunk, but not “fun”. You talk slow, think slow. For somebody who wakes up slowly & is groggy for a few minutes, it’s a lot like a strong version of that. It also manifests as a dull headache. And disturbed vision & hearing. There is considerable individual variation in which symptoms someone experiences & notices most readily. But they’re fairly consistent across repeated exposures for any given individual
Depending on the altitude you’ll progress from fine to stupid in a few seconds to a few minutes. Unresponsiveness sets in after maybe double that interval and unconsciousness after roughly triple that interval.
When I was in high school, a friend and I used to suck all the helium out of a party-size helium balloon for kicks. I didn’t realize at the time, but this basically induces hypoxia. The effect was similar to being really drunk and giggly and confused, as I recall.
Thanks. I think I’ll say that not breathing causes dizziness and some disorientation… and that breathing water is extremely uncomfortable, but neither is fatal.