# What was Dracula's end game in moving to London? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 17, 2019, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400 "2019-09-17T20:37:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400/121 "2019-09-24T19:38:00Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Yes, the geometric progression involved in “everyone who is bitten by a vampire becomes a vampire” means that the notion is a mathematically impossible pyramid scheme. Sort of Amway, but with fangs. > > I wonder if anyone has written fiction that takes it seriously, where eventually everyone is a vampire and there is nobody left to feed on. Van Helsing says they can’t eat anything but blood - I guess that would be vampire apocalypse, unless they can feed on each other, and that violates the law of entropy… The aforementioned **Anno Dracula** books by Kim Newman have an interesting take on that…the contemporary characters (real and fictional) have to make a moral decision about whether to become vampires or not. I usually hate this sort of pastiche, but the first two of these were kinda fun and Newman is a fanboy who did quite a lot of research. ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400/122 "2019-09-24T19:41:29Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I wonder if anyone has written fiction that takes it seriously, where eventually everyone is a vampire and there is nobody left to feed on. I believe there have been a number of them. Shit, I think Steven Seagal even starred in such a movie. I think there’s a trilogy of books that starts with an infection on a plane which turns out to be vampirism and the world goes under. It’s a TV show/miniseries or something now. I also recall some other story where people were kept as cattle, but the trouble was there wasn’t enough people left to feed everyone, and the vampire society was falling apart. There was some scene at a ‘blood’ store where a guy flipped out because he wasn’t getting enough blood and started trashing the place, and when his blood handout spilled on the floor other vampires scrambled to get it. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400/123 "2019-09-24T19:44:20Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I wonder if anyone has written fiction that takes it seriously, where eventually everyone is a vampire and there is nobody left to feed on. > Regards, > Shodan Richard Matheson, _I Am Legend._ ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2019, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400/124 "2019-09-24T20:13:28Z")
> [@Patch](#): > > I believe there have been a number of them. Shit, I think Steven Seagal even starred in such a movie. I think there’s a trilogy of books that starts with an infection on a plane which turns out to be vampirism and the world goes under. It’s a TV show/miniseries or something now. I also recall some other story where people were kept as cattle, but the trouble was there wasn’t enough people left to feed everyone, and the vampire society was falling apart. There was some scene at a ‘blood’ store where a guy flipped out because he wasn’t getting enough blood and started trashing the place, and when his blood handout spilled on the floor other vampires scrambled to get it. _The Strain_ (FX TV series) and _Daybreakers_ (movie), respectively. There’s also _The Passage_, a novel that was adapted into an NBC series, and _Van Helsing_, a SyFy original series. The first (and only) season of _The Passage_ was about the origin of the vampire plague, but in the last couple of episodes the world is falling apart, and an epilogue in the final episode shows a post-apocalyptic wasteland overrun by vampires. _Van Helsing_ starts after the vampire apocalypse, with only a handful of human survivors, including the titular hero, a descendant of Abraham Van Helsing. That’s all off of the top of my head. I’m sure there are many others. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2019, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400/125 "2019-09-25T13:21:53Z")
I wonder how long it would take for a vampire to starve to death. In the Dracula novel, when Jonathan Harker finds Dracula in his crypt in the castle, feeding seems to have partially rejuvenated Dracula. Maybe a starving vampire just gets older and older until he dies, or gets too weak to leave the coffin. How long a vampire can go without feeding changes the figures slightly, but doesn’t fix the Malthusian dilemma of geometric progression. A vampire can keep biting the same person over and over, as Dracula did with Lucy, and give the victim time between to recover, but eventually they will die and the vampire needs another victim. And has a competitor. And so on, and so on. Van Helsing says at one point that a vampire cannot enter a house without being invited in by the victim. Apparently Dracula bit Lucy while she was in the graveyard, and subsequently had enough mental influence over her that Lucy would invite him into her house. Lucy only bit children who were out of doors, apparently. Dracula kidnaps a child early in the novel to feed to the three vampire sisters. He must have caught the child out of doors. But then the child’s mother shows up in that heart-wrenching scene where she screams “Monster, give me back my child!” and Dracula calls in the wolves to eat her, instead of sucking her blood. Seems like a waste of resources. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2019, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400/126 "2019-09-25T19:51:18Z")
Wrapped the book up at lunch. It’s quite the page turner when the hunt for the boxes of dirt begins. The book starts slow and is a bit wordy, but not bad at all. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2019, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400/127 "2019-09-27T04:00:33Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I wonder how long it would take for a vampire to starve to death. In the Anne Rice universe vampires don’t die of starvation. They can be killed by various means but feeding is simply for keeping up vitality. Akasha went for centuries without feeding and just kept getting stronger and paler. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-draculas-end-game-in-moving-to-london/840400.md?page=6)