Have you ever wondered how long it would take for the whole world to become vampires, given that bloodsuckers actually exist?
Vampires have long become an integral part of the world's artistic culture. Books, films, games - all enthusiastically explore the phenomenon of a person turned into a night bloodsucker. But who will come to world domination faster: the vampires of Bram Stoker from Dracula or the characters of Anna Rice's Vampire Chronicles?
You will be surprised, but serious scientists are engaged in this issue. Dominik Czernia, a physicist at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Krakow, Poland, also asked this question after reading a report from an international group of scientists researching mathematical models of vampire-human relationships in fiction.
“It was a rather laborious project. I started off by looking for an interesting article on vampires where the authors would subtly speculate on the concept of vampires based on real data. I came up with the idea to test the concept scientifically using the well-known predator-prey hypothesis based on game theory.”Chernia told ScienceAlert.
The result of all this painstaking work is a fun online calculator.
You can choose with which types of vampires you want to start conquering the world, and then adjust parameters such as the size of the human population, the number of vampires, and the availability of professions such as vampire slayers. It should be noted that in most models, humanity is doomed. In the vast majority of cases, vampires manage to completely seize power.
According to the author of the project, this is exactly what the correct synthesis of literature and science should look like. Complex mathematical models can be applied to absolutely fantastic phenomena - this adds credibility to works of art and makes even the story of the "children of the night" much more realistic. And if something like this does happen on Earth one day … Well, we will at least know how much time is allotted for us to respond.
Vasily Makarov
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