I've been pondering your subjects' issue with sunlight. Being nocturnal makes little sense to me as an answer. The sun is a star. At night there are thousands of stars in the sky, visible only by the light they shone towards earth eons ago. While that is low-intensity starlight, the moon is also only visible because it catches and reflects sunlight. Solar illumination is quite present at night.
There are three ways we can process this.
The first is to observe epidermal tissue of vampires at the cellular level to see if it decomposes any faster under moonlight than in pitch blackness, and from there extrapolate a theory of intensity of radiation and its effects on vampire tissue. This theory will have to explain how vampires exhibit no weakness or sickness on a full moon bright enough to plainly see by.
The second is to postulate a psychosomatic disorder in which your subjects are so afraid of the sun that whatever they consciously associate with it poses a hazard. We then have to assume a psychosis is causing them to combust.
The third is to accept that we are biologists and these are magical monsters.
Hmm something to ponder
ReplyDeleteI pick the last choice!
ReplyDeleteFunny how the scientists on TV never see things as plainly as you do! I giggled at this one, John!
I like the last choice too.
ReplyDeleteWhile you're at it, can you figure out the retractable fangs?
Mr. Solender, aren't you supposed to be in India?
ReplyDeleteCathy, I should be a TV scientist. I bet it pays well, even if I die in the end from my own hubris.
Laurita, now I say it's magic. Or possibly a muscle tissue elevator shaft is developed on either side of the gumline upon being "infected."
As someone who suffers from both polymorphous light eruptions and drug induced phototoxicity, one has to wonder if vampires have similar medical disorders. Both have more to do with the amount of the sun's radiation I'm exposed to rather than sunlight itself.
ReplyDeleteI dare you explain sirens next. Magic is magic, there's not scientific explanation; more the less logic in it. Right? ;P
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling some vampires would take issue at being called magical monsters.
ReplyDeleteSherrilyn Kenyon says that vampires can't go out in sunlight because Apollo cursed them that if he ever saw their face he'd kill them. Makes sense to me.
Jai
Even though this is a story and I am not scientific...
ReplyDeleteWhy do I not feel heat from the moon or other stars, but do from the sun?
Doesn't photosynthesis (sp) depend on our sun's light and not moonlight or starlight?
Just wondering....
Vandamir, imagine a vampire extinction just because the Incredible Hulk moved into the neighborhood. I'm willing to fund this experiment.
ReplyDeleteMari, sirens are easy to explain. Loud noises that tell you to get out of the way of police. Pure science.
Jai, the Apollo hypothesis is entirely reasonable to me.
Peggy, are you suspecting vampires of being plants?
No, I am suspecting sunshine having more power and being exposed having stronger results than sunlight diffused as moonlight, and more than other starlights.
ReplyDeleteSo, to answer you question... sunlight creates a chemical reaction in vampires that starlight and moonlight cannot recreate, much the same way only our sun's light can nourish plants. Or kill them with it's heat... yeah, I guess I am saying vampires are "organic" in nature.
I worked a fourteen hour day--no excues, but please excuse the typos and poor grammar of my last comment. :)
ReplyDeleteI can't hold a 14-hour day against you, Peggy! But claiming a bite on the neck leaves a mammal with such radically different chemistry that he bursts into flame at dawn? That I might tease you about.
ReplyDeleteI'm leaning toward the phychosis-induced combustion. Psychosomatic disorders are very powerful in their effects, and are a plausible explanation in this case. These subjects exhibit a number of other symptoms that are consistent with an unstable underl ying phsychological state. Drinking blood and phobias of garlic and crosses are the first that come to mind.
ReplyDelete