Here, thump the center of your chest with your knuckles. That thing they bounce off is your sternum. It holds your ribs together at the front, but it also provides a thick bone-shield protecting your heart. It would not be an easy thing to penetrate it with a mallet-driven wooden stake. And presumably it does not disappear when you become a vampire. If I wanted to drive a stake through your heart, I would pretty much have to do it at a sideways angle avoiding the sternum. But nobody in vampire fic/films ever does that, AFAICR, it’s always straight-down.
A fear of missing perhaps. I recall that in the Anita Blake series in-universe it’s mentioned that it’s partly tradition, and partly “just Hollywood”; going under the ribcage and ripping the heart out is effective but really messy.
From what I remember in Buffy, she tended to strike just off-center, which is where the heart is. Also, in the Buffyverse, vampires have kind of a glass jaw when it comes to wood through the chest. It’s ridiculously easy to impale one–in Angel, a cop once shoved a blunt 2x4 through Angel’s chest (missing his heart) to stake the vampire standing behind him, and she wasn’t even a slayer.
I had the same gripe with Pulp Fiction.
Why do you presume the sternum (or the skeleton in general) doesn’t change when you become a vampire? Dracula could take different forms. The Buffy vampires had superhuman strength (among other traits) and explode into dust, traits which would suggest they don’t have conventional human bones. The Twilight vampires can run faster than a cheetah, while still being able to pick up and throw cars and boulders.
If a vampire sternum turns to mashed potatoes when it gets hit by a nice, solid oaken spike, so be it.
Buffy vampires seem to explode into dust at the mere touch of a wooden stake.
With an ancient vampire that could be interpreted as all his centuries of postponed decay-in-the-grave hitting him all at once – but it also happens with vampires who first rose from the grave five minutes ago.
Hence my second sentence.
On Buffy, it was the older vamps that were harder to kill with a stake. The vamp pursuing Faith when the character was introduced needed a 4x4 or something to take him down. But for the most part, younger vampires dusted at a hint of wood near the heart, like when Willow used a pencil.
The only instance I remember where a movie specifically mentioned vampires being more vulnerable despite their strength was “From Dusk 'til Dawn.”
I remember Joss talking about this very point. It doesn’t make sense for newly-minted vampires to crumble to dust, much less explode into it, but it was a cool effect and kept there from being a lot of corpses around to explain. You can tell that Joss works hard to maintain a sort of in-world consistency, but he’ll trade small bits of it to make an interesting show.
Now when Willow killed a vamp by floating a pencil into him (and seemingly right through his sternum too), I think Joss realized he’d stepped over a line. It was nice to see Willow coming into her power, but vampires are supposed to be plausibly frightening.
Not as much as most people think.
I think people think of the heart being to the left of the center because its beat feels stronger on that side.
Somebody better tell Tony Stark about this…
Come to think of it . . .
And used to fine effect in some of the fights.
This was specifically addressed in Pulp Fiction.
They simply referred to it as a breast plate.
It’s just a bone, it’s not some kind of miracle material. Bones break and are punctured all the time, they’re actually quite porous; Hell if you get through your entire life without ever breaking one you must live in a jar. I had two broken arms, a leg, a collar bone, a few ribs and several fingers before I was 20.
Yeah, but how easy is it to punch through the sternum with a hypodermic needle, let alone a stake?
Every time someone donates bone marrow a needle is inserted into the center of a bone, the pelvic bone (I suppose other bones may be used but I’ve never heard of it).
It’s really not all that difficult to penetrate it. I imagine a stake would be more difficult than a needle, but a stiff needle will absolutely do it with relative ease.
Ouch. I’m in my 40s and I’ve never broken anything.
<taps on jar>
Dude, you need to get out more 