Sci Pop Talks - Vampires vs. Zombies

Larisa Epp and Dakota Anderson Author

07/14/2015 Added

279 Plays

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Dr. Raychelle Burks and Dr. Rebecca Lai explore the science behind Zombies and Vampires.

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[00:00:01.833]Alright everyone, thank you. Good evening, thank you so much for coming. I'm Jenny Thorson, I'm a librarian here at Love Library.
[00:00:07.806]And welcome to our first SciPop Talk! of the year
[00:00:13.373]This is a very special Halloween themed SciPop Talk!
[00:00:17.920]Vampires versus Zombies. So we have two fantastic guest speakers tonight that are going to present very compelling arguments in a battle of the undead.
[00:00:27.717]We have Dr. Rebecca Ly. She's the Susan J. Rosowski assosicate professor in the department of Chemisty at UNL.
[00:00:35.661]She's known for her chemistry and Harry Potter class and her love of vampires.
[00:00:43.150]On the other side, we have Dr. Raychelle Burks, she is post doctoral research associate with the department of Chemistry at Doane College and the center of nano-hybrid functional materials at UNL.
[00:00:57.258]She's known for her American Chemical Society reaction videos and her love of all things zombie.
[00:01:04.815]Our two doctors, mad scientists if you will, will each have an opportunity to lure you to their particular flavor of the undead.
[00:01:14.629]And in the end your choice will determine the victor. You can tweet about this event using the hashtag SciPop Talks!
[00:01:23.710]Show your support for your team with the tags team Zombie or team Vamp.
[00:01:30.496]We will hand out goodie bags to the best costumes during the question and answers.
[00:01:35.961]Remember to take a look at our wonderful book, game, and movie display and pick something to check out after the talk.
[00:01:42.991]You should have received a copy of our lineup of talks for next Spring.
[00:01:48.376]We have some fantastic lineups, so make sure you get that and if you don't have one, Joanie can give you one after the talk.
[00:01:56.177]Alright so to get things started, we'll need to take a count of supporters from each team now and then we'll take another one after the lecture to determine whether Dr. Ly or Dr. Burks was more persuasive for their side.
[00:02:10.940]Alright so it's time to decide. Are you team zombie?
[00:02:13.954]...
[00:02:22.751]Team vampire?
[00:02:25.454]...
[00:02:29.578]And we actually have for the equal opportunity land of the undead, the team Vampire-Zombie hybirds, also known as "Vambies" or "Zompires."
[00:02:40.285]So anybody that didn't vote, that's where you are right now.
[00:02:43.901]Awesome, so without any further ado, I give you Dr. Rebecca Ly and Dr. Burks.
[00:02:50.281]So we're gonna leap right in to our debate.
[00:02:54.752]By talking about diet, first up, of course everyone knows that vampire's diet is blood and not all types of blood.
[00:03:04.179]Human blood, human blood is composed of plasma and three different types of cells.
[00:03:08.810]Red blood cells for transporting oxygen, white blood cells for fighting infections, and platelets for blood clotting.
[00:03:15.353]Now, blood makes up about 7% of our body weight. So you can think of, "Well that's a lot of blood,"
[00:03:22.763]But I'm going to tell you, vampires diet is lean and mean. If you think about donating one pint of blood, about 500 mills at a blood bank, that corresponds to only around 450 calories.
[00:03:33.272]Now, if you think about that vampires actually have a diet similar to us, 2000 calories a day. It's going to require 4+ bags of blood. Which is not easy to come by.
[00:03:43.303]Now, another part I will say, vampires' diet's are not all that balanced. You think about -- or that nutritious -- because of blood, too high protein, too low carbohydrates and fibers, aka atkins diet.
[00:03:56.936]Now, that could be one of the reasons why, if you look at the movies and in tv shows, vampires are generally very slender.
[00:04:04.231]Well you know, it has been on this low carb diet, for well, centuries.
[00:04:09.310](laughter)
[00:04:11.564]Zombies, on the other hand, are not really so much on the lean diet.
[00:04:16.420]They are eating a lot of flesh, and um for most of the zombies movies, people are familiar with, that would be human flesh.
[00:04:25.440]And not just any flesh, not just the skin, right? What are they eating as the human parts?
[00:04:30.236]Just like you eat, if you're not a vegetarian, you're talking about muscle.
[00:04:34.259]Right? So if you're actually eating meat, that is a high protein and for some of the victims, perhaps, also a high fat diet.
[00:04:42.325]Also, I wouldn't call that diet balanced either. Right? They're not reaching for a mango, right? They're reaching for man. Haha so, the zombie diet too is definitely not lean.
[00:04:57.501]The entire human body, if you were to consume, say someone who is about 5' 7" and a hundred fifty pounds, it's about 85,000 calories if you consume what you would say are the edible portions, so good thing that the zombies' metabolism aren't still working because they would get really fat.
[00:05:18.122]That is a huge calorie intake to take in all the time. So, maybe that explains why zombies too, they tend to come in all shapes and sizes also, they are not terribly lean.
[00:05:33.263]Now of course, how do you have vampires co-exist with humans? Is that there is synthetic blood, now the True Blood producers and writers have already gotten that.
[00:05:41.458]Now if you look at these True Blood, they're not just one type, there's O, AB, A, and B. Presumably vampires actually pick their favorites.
[00:05:49.888]So, we'll see who's gonna be the victim. I'm A blood, so it depends on the type.
[00:05:55.110]So having synthetic blood not only helps vampires it is actually important for humans as well, well not for consumption, but for transfusion.
[00:06:03.521]Now I would like to say, last year of all places, Romania, one of the scientists actually in Romania, developed a synthetic blood using a protein called (SOMETHING). Which is an oxygen carrying protein, like hemoglobin. But extracted from sea worms.
[00:06:21.562]Now what they think about is that, of course it's not a permanent source of blood. But it could be used after surgery, 10 to 24 hours. Until our body is capable of replenishing that blood.
[00:06:33.245]Now another part, they brought in a very nice concept, it's called instant blood. Which you can actually carry these proteins everywhere and when, okay transfusion needed, you can just add salt and water.
[00:06:44.740]Reconstitute right there, right then. Now that's amazing, this is very good for vampires, well it's very good for us because there is always not enough blood donations.
[00:06:52.322]But for vampires, that's essentially, you can think that it's a trip to McDonald's, but faster.
[00:07:00.189]Well, the good news is, for zombies, is that science is also making synthetic meat. Most scientists are working on these types of projects, they're using actually adult stem cells and then a little bit of science in the lab and we get meat.
[00:07:17.434]Now, tricky thing is, the texture, we've really got to work on that. Because the texture of meat, is actually, that is one of the tell tale signs.
[00:07:30.518]Right? Any vegetarians in the house? So you can get things that smell a bit like meat, taste a bit like meat, but what can't you sometimes reproduce? The texture of meat.
[00:07:42.221]And so, we're still working on that. But potentially remember, zombies maybe not that bright, maybe we could fool them with this type of meat and they could exist among us.
[00:07:57.249]Ah, how to repel and avoid. Usually in the movies, for the most part, human beings don't really want to be friends with zombies.
[00:08:07.597]Now, vampires, that's a little bit different -- depending, yes -- now of course the first way to repel is light. Because most vampires are not day walkers.
[00:08:17.247]So one way to avoid them is to come to the library, just don't be outside when it's dark.
[00:08:22.530]So that's what we don't want. Now, next, is the holy water, well vampires because are known to be well it's a unholy spirit or unclean. So it should be scared of anything that's holy included holy water or the cross itself.
[00:08:36.894]But in later slides, I'm going to tell you one thing. Maybe vampires are not scared of just water. Not just holy water, maybe any type of water.
[00:08:45.244]Now, that I'm gonna have to say, that's a unique part. Why garlic? Why not onion? For neither of them is going to give them good smelling breath, that's for sure.
[00:08:53.636]So that, garlic, could be because of that, which is allicin. Allicin is a sulfur containing compound that is found in garlic extract and has known to be viruscidal, means that it could kill viruses, and bactericidal, meaning it could kill bacteria.
[00:09:07.877]Now the fact is that alleged vampirism is due to the fact of a viral infection such as rabies.
[00:09:13.668]Perhaps, this is actually the cure to solve this vampirism problem.
[00:09:18.828]Now this is one area where I think zombies might have a leg up. Is that zombies, sunshine doesn't bother them one bit.
[00:09:29.881]Anyone who has watched The Walking Dead or zombie movies, sometimes they're made a lot at night because night is scarier.
[00:09:35.651]But, zombies will eat you and shamble after you in the day time and not miss a bit. So that is not a weakness of their's.
[00:09:44.285]The problem maybe is the shambling part. So this is from a really funny zombie movie, called "Cockneys vs. Zombies," where zombies attack a retirement home. And this gentleman is actually beating them with a walker.
[00:10:00.438]So even in the Walking Dead series which is by far the most popular zombie show people are watching right now, is those are what is called romero zombies or slow moving zombies, you could simply walk faster than they could to maybe get away.
[00:10:18.277]Definitely if you're a runner, no problem right? So you could just physically avoid them. Now another way to avoid them, which we talked a little bit about last year, and anybody who has watched Walking Dead or read the series knows, they always use chemical camouflage.
[00:10:35.871]So in season 1, they just coated themselves with biological fluids they got from a corpse to smell dead and they went right through a huge mass of zombies in downtown Atlanta.
[00:10:48.874]They did the same things in season 2, season 3. They do it over and over again.
[00:10:54.045]They often, one season they just chained zombies and used them like little living undead camouflage agents.
[00:11:02.484]So you could definitely, kind of, just fool them, by coating yourself with a little death cologne to get around the problem.
[00:11:12.257]And of course, I have to say that, holy water, that never works on vampires. So maybe I'm the winner in this category, but maybe! We'll see.
[00:11:25.806]Ah, brains. I don't have a good feeling about this one. Yeah, this one sorry.
[00:11:31.985]So, vampires are known to have good brain functions, at least comparable to humans or maybe even superior to humans.
[00:11:37.897]Now, for those who have to remember that Count Vahn Count in Sesame Street, vampires like to do counting and that's a good thing.
[00:11:45.414]So, they might be OCD about it actually. So, the fact is that why came from the mythology long time ago in the Middle Ages, people began sprinkling rice onto the coffin to make sure that the disease would not come back as a Vampire and try to attack people.
[00:11:59.616]Well the reason is because of this OCD-ness, that the vampire can count every single piece of rice and get them accounted for and by the time you finish counting the sun has risen and back to the coffin.
[00:12:10.262]So, I think that's a long time ago, that's middle ages. I'm going to advance it to more recent, these days. I think it might be good, they might have actually graduated from counting rice, we might actually could put a calculus book on the coffin.
[00:12:22.859]So by the time sunrise came, vampires gone, calculus homework completed, so that's a good thing.
[00:12:29.868]Now, another part about mathematics and vampires, I have to add this point. Is that in 2007, two phyicists actually calculated, basically determined a formula saying that well if 16 hundred A.D., first vampire, January and that vampire killed one human and converted that person to be a vampire.
[00:12:47.525]So, he did the calculations, eventually basically in 2 and a half years, all the humans will be consumed and then we'll all be vampires and then they're going to run out of food sources.
[00:13:01.178]That theory may not be entirely correct because they have not taken into concern about the birth rates of human, and remember that some vampires, Twilight vampires feed on animals. Vampires have good self control and good brain function.
[00:13:14.933]They could control themselves and feed every two years perhaps. That could be it, but I want to highlight it's actually quite nice to see scientists really working on formulas to disprove or prove the existence of vampires.
[00:13:30.802]More science for you, there is a Zombie Research Society, which I am a member. Is chalk full of scientists, PhD's, neurologists, neurobiologists, medical doctors, chemists - like myself.
[00:13:40.410]And they've detailed based on what we know about zombies from pop culture, what level of brain damage would have to be involved to effect mobility, memory, speech, and basically all of it.
[00:13:54.632]There is massive brain damage that goes on.
[00:13:59.410]And so, they've kind of imagined what brain scans would look like, so and you probably saw a bit of MRI work that showed up in Walking Dead series one. Where they're talking about a complete and catastrophic change to the brain that is influencing all this behavior, because they don't remember.
[00:14:20.271]They don't remember anything, they don't remember family, they don't remember friends, they don't remember themselves, they don't remember social morays, I mean there's tons.
[00:14:28.864]Their mobility is affected, their speed is affected, the gate of their walk is affected, they usually don't speak, just a groaning (moans). Kinda like undergraduates at a 7:30 a.m. class, sounds very similar.
[00:14:40.324]So, definitely, eh a little bit of a problem when it comes to some of the higher level brain function and that gets back to Dr. Ly's point of making good decisions.
[00:14:53.630]So there's a really fun comic book called "The New DeadWardians" that kind of quote the lower class are zombies and the upper classes, the elite, are vampires, and that kind of fits in to how we view these monsters as being.
[00:15:09.702]One is quite educated and worldly and able to kind of remember their life and all these things and be really smart.
[00:15:16.427]And zombies, not so much, and so this kind of goes in to that. But it also kind of goes in to the idea of who's smart enough to not eat all of their food supply.
[00:15:32.269]Well, that's the reason why some feed on animal blood and more so I just mentioned on True Blood, synthetic blood, if they could actually once in awhile, only on New Year's, got a drink of humans, other than that, bottled blood to go.
[00:15:43.794]So that could actually control the usage of it, to allow them to coexist with humans.
[00:15:49.219]And there's definitely been that in cinema, where you talk about, okay, we have to be conservative.
[00:15:53.831]Only Lovers Left Alive was the very recent vampire movie with Tom Hiddleston, and the friend that's actually the sister of his love interest was kind of indiscriminate, almost in the killing.
[00:16:06.387]Not only that would bring attention on them but that you have to really meter this out. This isn't an infinite supply. That there's a lot of things in place and it draws too much attention to ourselves.
[00:16:16.266]Zombies not so much with that. Right? There's this kind of consuming, what we kind of think of a pandemic environment, is how we view zombies. We don't really those kind of words, epidemic or pandemic or kind of apocalypse when we deal with vampires.
[00:16:33.720]Because those monsters show restraint, so that is that kind of ability, even though you're monstrous, you're only selectively monstrous. And that could be, I might have to concede this point too, but we'll see.
[00:16:51.746]You might win in this category. So brawn, brawn yes.
[00:16:56.340]Vampires not always think about being brawny, they are very strategic, very smart, but not always brawny.
[00:17:02.840]Now if you think back to, date back to Nosferatu 1922, is that they're mostly loners, first of all, there's never a huge population of vampires.
[00:17:10.257]But of course, later on people get these fantastic True Blood vampires. There's more and more they become families, communities, societies, etc.
[00:17:17.713]But the fact is that they don't come from the brawny that they mostly think about. They're very strategic, now you really notice from here is the fact is that vampires use weapons.
[00:17:27.648]So not only, they have two types of weapons, in addition to their fangs. Throw in a few AK47s, you can really think about vampires, could be a very formidable enemy as well.
[00:17:39.309]Oh, yes. Not so much with zombies. But with zombies, ya know, we often say a mark of an advance species is their ability to use weapons. Right? Or tools. Because weapons are just a type of tool.
[00:17:51.561]So zombies, not so much with the tools. They kind of fall back on the fact that they look horrifying and they're biting people.
[00:17:58.794]But there's usually a lot more of them. It's almost a swarm. So you know like a swarm of locusts coming in. Maybe a tarantula would be scarier or a scorpion. But its the suffocating nature of the attack.
[00:18:17.913]It's just that they come and they come in huge numbers and it's seems where if you see one zombie, what should you be looking for? The others.
[00:18:27.760]Because they always seem to come in a hoard. In fact there's a great French zombie movie called "La Hoard." They come in huge numbers.
[00:18:36.198]So can you make up for the fact that maybe you don't get weapons, you don't have a strategy, they don't seem to be working together in a lot of zombie movies.
[00:18:43.654]Other than, they just are this overwhelming force. So maybe a little bit. And one key bit is zombies, they don't need down time.
[00:19:00.718]Who needs down time?
[00:19:05.674]No, no, no. They're just taking a break to recuperate.
[00:19:09.717]Zombies don't take breaks. So that could be a strength, it could also be a weakness. That's true.
[00:19:18.481]Ah, alright. Possible real life causes.
[00:19:20.854]Yes, now this is where the science comes in. As I already talked about previously, slightly, about rabies.
[00:19:25.426]That's the viral particle of basically rabies. Now why would I think this could be mistaken as vampirism? Is because of the fact that people that are infected by rabies want to bite. So they actually want to bite.
[00:19:38.185]Now another part is that, in terms of raging rabies, or rabies that are actually, ya know advanced state, they would actually develop hydrophobia. And that's why I talk about maybe not the Holy water, just water in general.
[00:19:51.553]Now of course, another part of rabies, why it's associated, some rabies are actually specifically transmitted by bats. You may think about mostly dogs. But there are certain types that only by bats. So that's relating back rabies to vampires.
[00:20:04.922]So there's another one, other than rabies, that is related to this molecule called Porphyrin.
[00:20:11.444]Now, this disease is called Porphyrius. Which is a very rare genetic disease. Now the patient could basically not produce the heam. Think about iron porphyrin. That's the heam group that is inside your hemoglobin.
[00:20:24.243]Which is responsible for transporting oxygen that we all need.
[00:20:27.880]So, these patients they basically cannot make it very well therefore, they require blood transfusion. Which could be mistaken as blood consumption, a long time ago you can think of.
[00:20:37.571]Now another part with porphyrius is that they also have some symptoms, such as light induced blisters of their skin and also skin discoloration, that's why they have to stay inside, never out in the broad daylight, that's one of the reasons.
[00:20:51.875]Now another reason that you can think of how it can be misdiagnosed, is the fact is that the diagnosis of porphyrius is based on looking at their urine and also their blood samples.
[00:21:01.546]Because they cannot actually process or synthesize these well, a lot of times this molecule, porphryin, which is red in color would be found in their urine.
[00:21:09.220]Makes someone to think of wow what the person has been eating to have that type of red color.
[00:21:14.853]So that could be one of the reasons it got mistaken as vampirism, but maybe due to two types of diseases.
[00:21:22.370]And rabies could also explain zombies. Biting, the foaming at the mouth, another thing that rabies can is that it can affect how you walk, your ability to actually do fine motor movement starts to slowly depend on which stage you're at, your logical function.
[00:21:41.834]There have even been scientists that have hypothesized that the kind of patient zero for both strains of undead monsters, rabies, then you had some mutations go on.
[00:21:50.855]So that's just one option maybe. There are real life species that quote zombify other species.
[00:21:58.778]So one of these would be whats called an emerald wasp and this one's really cool because it attacks a cockroach which is way bigger than itself and it injects a nuerotoxin to two specific locations in its brain.
[00:22:14.301]Which completely makes this cockroach docile, so after it has been stung the two times, it then does this weird thing of grooming itself excessively for about thirty minutes and the wasp is going and kind of setting up its lair, cause things are about to go horribly wrong, um more horribly wrong I should say.
[00:22:36.385]So then after about thirty minutes, the wasp just kind of ya know coaxes, with no real work, ya know kind of moves a cockroach in an area, implants an egg into the cockroach after burying it, by the way cockroach is alive the entire time. Alive.
[00:22:53.838]And puts a fertilized egg in the cockroach, seals it back up with really small pebbles and then leaves, guess what happens next.
[00:23:04.387]Okay so its like a chest burtered alien. So what is the chemical, this wasp venom? It's some type of, they're still doing work on this, mapping out all the compounds in the venom. But they believe it is a neurotoxin.
[00:23:18.223]And what it's doing is it's affecting the ocopene receptors in the brain which completely make the cockroach incredibly docile and affects movement, all these neurological functions to just make it kind of very, well the kind of neurological features we think about when we think about zombies.
[00:23:37.871]So that neuro, that neurological component is a huge one with zombies. So, often tetrodotoxin gets brought up a lot in kind of a real world example of zombism.
[00:23:49.735]This goes way back to the beginning, especially in Hollywood, the mythology is kind of the haitian zombie right, or anyone who's ever read or seen Serpent and the Rainbow, that kind of idea that you can give someone a neurtoxin and they will be chemically into a zombie right, that it will affect all of these motor functions, and it does.
[00:24:09.483]It affects all of the same kind of traits. If you ask about the traits of a zombie that related to brain function, this one can affect those. But it doesn't cause any of the bite-y bitiness, which is good.
[00:24:24.876]So evolution, alright.
[00:24:30.281]So evolution, thinking about vampires, I would always say those who are remember Nosferatu 1922, very classic movie. But if you look at that, well the fangs, the face, not particularly, posh looking I would say and not social, loner type of guy.
[00:24:45.708]Now it could evolve and rise vampires like Lestat, a little already more posh looking, and later on you're gonna add, for the first time in underworld series, you see a female vampire lead.
[00:24:57.411]Which is very good in terms of having the diversity, and of course the True Blood, different diversity, there's different. And last but not least I would not want to not mention the sparkling vampires, or the Twilight vampires.
[00:25:11.186]But I would like to say, you can see the evolution, is that from the beginning, a really monster and loner and not social, to become more and more social and now they are integrated into the human society.
[00:25:22.990]Being able to coexist with humans.
[00:25:27.419]So zombies, like vampires, have had a huge evolution in pop culture.
[00:25:31.523]If we first start with one of the big popular zombie movies, back in the day 1932, which was called White Zombie.
[00:25:38.512]Wasn't actually dead, this was more your classic voodoo, what they would call this era of voodoo zombies, where they were made into this mindless creature that you could control.
[00:25:50.256]By they way, this was a love story.
[00:25:55.827]So, there was that era and it really wasn't until Romero, which is why he is kind of like the distinguishing person behind zombies.
[00:26:03.187]Romero's 1968 zombie classic, where you start to see the look and the appearance of an undead of living dead monster. This is also what is thought to be the first time a zombie actually bites and appears to consume flesh on film.
[00:26:23.199]Now, that is in '68. It's not until '85 where you actually have zombies on film that are obsessed with brains.
[00:26:34.292]That's not a Romero thing. He just did an interview saying "Enough with the brains, that wasn't me."
[00:26:41.281]That was this movie, which he didn't have anything to do with. So there's an evolution in the monsters.
[00:26:46.848]Vampires seem to be getting better looking, zombies seem to be going to a more horrifying direction.
[00:26:53.512]Until we get to Warm Bodies, where we almost see a reversal start to happen and also not as mindless.
[00:27:04.341]There's some memory there, there's wanting to actually have human, what we would call human relationship.
[00:27:11.655]It's almost a step back from the zombies we've been seeing, that have dominated for a good 30 to 40 years in cinema.
[00:27:24.086]Now, here is the scary thing. Instead of a versus situation, what if we had a love story.
[00:27:36.644]Very well matched, I would say. Ya know not too shabby. Is there something like this in nature?
[00:27:42.899]Yeah, well it is entirely possible, some might have heard about it, Ligers and Tigons.
[00:27:48.730]Now you think about what is a liger, a liger is basically a lion father and a tiger mother and there's the other, tigon, tiger father with a lion mother end up having a hybrid called tigons.
[00:28:02.749]Now I would like to add that it's really about their properties that's very unique.
[00:28:06.101]Now ligers, actually take after the mom, liking water and swimming, which you don't see lions swimming.
[00:28:12.379]But at the same time, it also likes to be very social, like lions. You think about a pride of lions.
[00:28:17.763]So basically, they are the best of both worlds. Combining the best attributes of both parents to have this stronger better animal species.
[00:28:26.886]And I would like to add that ligers can grow from 900 to 1200 pounds, which is larger than either, both of the parents.
[00:28:33.407]I don't know about large vampires zombie mix. That might be a bit tough.
[00:28:39.665]A 1200 pound zombie vampire, ew.
[00:28:43.464]So could we build a better undead monster by having a zompire or a vambie.
[00:28:51.591]So we did talk about some of the weakness of both monsters, right?
[00:28:56.264]So, what are some of the maybe physical weakness of vampires?
[00:29:04.106]Sunlight.
[00:29:07.890]They need some downtime. That's a kind of consistent thing, maybe not so much in the Twilight, I'm not much of, I confess I haven't read Twilight so I'm not sure.
[00:29:18.198]But a lot of the other vampires, there is a downtime.
[00:29:20.560]So what would be some of the physical weaknesses to zombies?
[00:29:31.328]They really damage themselves, that's a key bit because you start losing parts. Which always happens in zombie movies.
[00:29:40.247]You just can't move very fast, right? You've lost appendages, you've got these massive holes in your structure.
[00:29:46.607]What would be another physical weakness, the main issue?
[00:29:52.966]Neurological deficit is huge. Part of the brain thing is, a lot of them move very fast when we see them on cinema.
[00:30:01.540]What would be an exception to that? Ecspecially lately.
[00:30:04.729]There have been a few movies where they've had quote fast zombies.
[00:30:11.718]World War Z.
[00:30:12.694]Rage zombies, but are those really zombies? That could be another debate.
[00:30:19.898]So, if you were to have actually some kind of hybrid, what would you want the hybrid to be?
[00:30:26.103]What would be some of the characteristics that you'd want? If we could get a ligon, liger, tigon, ligon.
[00:30:33.376]If you could get a hybrid, what would you want the characteristics to be?
[00:30:41.631]You'd hope maybe not the neurological issue.
[00:30:43.576]You want kind of some of the neurological boon of the vampire, right.
[00:30:51.872]But maybe you wouldn't want that whole sunlight thing. You'd want them to be able to be day walkers, so a bit like Blade, who is a hybird, right.
[00:31:02.572]He's not human, not technically, there's some issue where he's human. There's definitely a hybrid component there. So you want maybe a day walker.
[00:31:10.862]To that to be transferred to the actually hybrid, you want maybe advanced, some advanced brain structure compared to the zombie.
[00:31:19.760]What would be some other? What about the things we use to kind of evade?
[00:31:29.532]Cause vampires had a lot of weaknesses, right? We took care of the sunlight, the water thing though, the garlic thing, might want to, zombies don't have either one of those issues it seems like.
[00:31:42.992]But the neurological thing, I think would be the big contributor from maybe the vampire, assuming that intelligence, is definitely a dominate thing, we hope so at least.
[00:31:57.067]We're gonna have to do behind the scenes swear to see if that's the case.
[00:31:59.632]What about aesthetics? Let's just be vague for a moment.
[00:32:07.690]Oh, when they changed. When they changed, they did get pretty ugly. But the True Blood vampires, not so much, zombies though, zombies have been, at least for the last 40 years, have been consistently ugly, I'll just say it.
[00:32:24.197]Okay so, maybe though we don't want so much of that, right? A little bit on the vanity, I don't know about you guys but I think vampires, are a little bit vain.
[00:32:34.236]Well just a little bit but that actually leads to one interesting information about that someone was saying, oh vampires are scared of mirrors or that hating mirrors, because it cannot see it's own reflection, and I think that it's very sad that it cannot groom it's hair nicely.
[00:32:47.350]I don't know how Edward Cullen can get his hair like that, but I'd also like to add another point that because they have no reflection, you cannot take pictures or video taping them either.
[00:32:57.682]So they are just angry because they cannot upload their selfies every fifteen seconds.
[00:33:01.603]There's no selfies, and they would be great at Twitter. I think vampires would dominate and zombies would, again with the neuro, you'd hope with the neurological thing, I'm not feeling they would take to social media, or maybe they'd be awesome at it, it's tricky.
[00:33:17.613]Maybe the vampire, by cross, these vambies or zompires would be able to see their reflection. Oh that would be scary.
[00:33:27.873]That's not good.
[00:33:29.214]Diet wise, you would hope, along with the neurological function, they could control their diet a bit more, right.
[00:33:36.224]Because what do we see consistently again and again in zombie movies?
[00:33:40.630]It's this overwhelming, this swarm, there's no thinking ahead, there's no planning.
[00:33:46.545]Ya know if I eat all the food in my kitchen, I'm going to need to get more.
[00:33:52.558]Well then if you've wiped out the entire food supply and there is no more, then what happens?
[00:34:01.216]That is the problem. Vampires are always thinking ahead, for the most part.
[00:34:04.504]We hope that that kicks in to this, ya know, hybird, that you would think about managing your food supply a bit better.
[00:34:13.362]And also I didn't mention this back in the food supply, but the main reason why we are trying to do synthetic meat, for us, is also managing our food supply and managing how we produce it.
[00:34:24.252]So, the same thing you hope would happen here. Would be maybe they'd start, they've got good neurological function.
[00:34:32.135]We've got a couple hybrid scientists and they really take this meat thing to the next level.
[00:34:37.357]So they can modulate how much human flesh they have to consume.
[00:34:40.709]So, we're gonna end it a bit on a romantic note, of maybe there's an option of, we build a better undead.
[00:34:51.376]Better, perhaps scarier for us, monster.
[00:34:55.866]We'll take any questions now if you have any.
[00:35:01.023]Thank you by the way for coming to our first SciPop Talks.
[00:35:12.620]Questions, anyone?
[00:35:19.463]Yes? Uh oh.
[00:35:27.732]So has the genetic sequence been identified, which makes both species, ya know, never die?
[00:35:33.197]Oh, well, that's the tricky bit. Because if you're already dead, then can you never die? Or are you just like, that would also get back in to you know, what does it mean to actually be alive.
[00:35:48.862]If you can actually find out what makes you immortal, and what makes you kind of live forever.
[00:35:53.433]Does anyone remember that movie? Um, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. I think it was Death Becomes Her.
[00:36:01.214]Okay so to me, I was thinking about this today. Would you call those two vampires or would you call them zombies?
[00:36:11.339]Hybrids.
[00:36:13.074]Because they are quote immortal, but if they get physically injured, what was the think they had to have available to them?
[00:36:18.560]A really good plastic surgeon, right? So they couldn't regenerate.
[00:36:22.425]What do we think about vampires? They have some type of massive regeneration scheme. Which you kinda do, right? Your cells are always dying and if things go well you're having new ones kick in, a lot of cells in your body, not all of them, but a lot of them do.
[00:36:38.466]So you are kind of always regenerating. Same goes for blood that I talked about, you usually have a human, a male usually about 12 pints of blood, a female usually about 9.
[00:36:48.748]So you can donate a pint of blood and in a few hours, your body will regenerate that, so that I encourage you guys to donate blood.
[00:36:56.306]And vampires can regenerate, that's what the downtime is usually for. Zombies not so much, right? But they're still with the moving, but they're rotting.
[00:37:05.956]It's kind of like having that flesh eating disease or it's like they haven't been told yet, really stop.
[00:37:16.459]And so, like what would be the mechanics involved there?
[00:37:21.110]And there's really been some fun work, I encourage you guys to research Zombie Research Society. Because they talk about that in some detail.
[00:37:28.427]Some geneticists have hypothesized what that would involve. Would it be kind of a form of cancer? Would it be, kind of you know, the programming is not working.
[00:37:38.159]The programming off isn't working or the programming on isn't working, or it's some kind of double defecate.
[00:37:44.680]Where there was some kind of hypothesis that there was some kind of wacky form of cancer. Which you're just like, interesting.
[00:37:52.360]Or other kinds of diseases where you have, if you look at a disease model, what would be, like we did tonight, what would be a combination, could you do it with one disease, or would you need a kind of catastrophic genetic abnormality to come up with the right answer?
[00:38:09.447]And then what would cause that kind of thing. So that's the fun thing I think about these kind of talks is, given our basis in fact and science, can we come up with a combination of answers that can explain these, wacky, what we call silly things.
[00:38:26.513]Ya know, zompires. So for my answer is that I would hope that the zompire, as the zombie and vampire society, would be able to find out the sequence, and I do have to say I do work with DNA bio sensors, so you know the sequence I'm gonna generate answers.
[00:38:43.295]Yes! That would be luckily, it was fun for my research.
[00:38:47.826]The vampire brain, vampires as scientists, and even the hybrids are scientists. They're going to of course, like we do, they're going to study themselves.
[00:38:58.573]Right, and so I would expect that and because they're gonna live forever, you'd have a real consistency in the research, ya know go on forever.
[00:39:09.570]Exactly, they could spend a lot of time doing that, yes.
[00:39:12.369]And they want to improve themselves just like we want to improve, we want to cure cancer, we want to have all sorts of advances in medical research right?
[00:39:31.731]I was thinking about how we often think about ecological niches in terms of the top level predator, and it occurs to me that zombies could eat vampires but vampires can't really prey on zombies.
[00:39:45.992]Oh yeah. Take that.
[00:39:50.560]No, vampires have better brains that can disguise themselves, hide or do something else or use guns.
[00:39:56.760]I would wonder about that though, because often times vampires exist in a lot of pop culture, books and tv, exist among humans and the humans don't know it, so that means that they must look like humans the most and what other thing must they?
[00:40:18.376]Act like humans the most and smell like humans the most.
[00:40:25.488]Which means zombies aren't going to be fooled by vampires, even though they're not dead, they don't smell dead. They are undead but the don't smell it, they must not, because we've never seen that come up in human interactions with vampires.
[00:40:42.870]So I think you're right, I would say that zombies could totally go for them, but then, when they bite into them, would the texture, would it be delicious?
[00:40:57.200]Do zombies care about taste? That would be the other thing that could influence our choices of trying to get the synthetic meat.
[00:41:05.310]But in reverse, vampires, I don't see them going for zombies, because again. Well no, too high cholesterol. They just want to maintain their swell figures, well the blood also doesn't seem to be circulating anymore.
[00:41:21.116]You're having this dead tissue that's rotting on you and your organs aren't working so, I mean that's part of the problem too.
[00:41:29.385]You'd think that you'd be having, ya know besides rigor being set in, which maybe almost explains the kind of stiffness.
[00:41:36.740]You also have livor mortis which would be gravity, ya know your heart isn't pumping anymore so your blood is going to go in the direction of gravity.
[00:41:43.546]So even if a vampire did bite them on the neck, they really should have bitten them somewhere down here.
[00:41:50.698]But then if the blood isn't moving, that means it's gonna start clotting, it's gonna be a lumpy mess.
[00:41:55.452]Which I'm thinking, not so appealing.
[00:41:59.977]Yeah, that's hard to say, yes okay on that case it's true, vampires could be eaten by zombies.
[00:42:04.900]But you have to figure out if the zombie walks like that, vampire disappears, just gone, zombie is incapable of transforming into a bat or a wolf, but vampires can, so here you go, you have to catch it first before you can eat it.
[00:42:18.614]That's true and they could evade, that's very good, you'd need a heck of a swarm right?
[00:42:22.718]You'd need a full blown global, kind of, issue going on.
[00:42:27.411]Vampires are faster, usually they're faster than humans, we like to think of them as being more crafty or maybe not smarter but definitely more savvy, more swift.
[00:42:41.088]But they also require down time. So maybe the zombies will just get lucky and go in to the old vampire mansion when they're all taking their siesta.
[00:42:50.850]Yeah that would be, that's true. If they find their castle and they try and attack them when they're in their coffins, that might work out, we'll see.
[00:42:58.679]That was a great question. Great question, thanks.
[00:43:04.875]Well, I'm a little puzzled by the hybrid theory, because I don't know a lot about either of these, but I don't think they reproduce sexually.
[00:43:18.197]That would be not in a lot of mythology, no.
[00:43:22.301]So I don't see how you would get a cross between a vampire and a zombie.
[00:43:26.588]Well, vampires and zombies, actually no cross has ever been made. We came up with these terms, the fact is that vampires have, clearly, reproduced with humans, in a sexually type of reproduction.
[00:43:40.780]Yeah they're having cases of that, so we projected that maybe it could be fine with zombies as well.
[00:43:45.360]But zombies, being undead, that's a theory not tested, we would say.
[00:43:49.485]But you're rather, drafted into either the zombie crew or the vampire crew, aren't you?
[00:43:55.885]Well I think, that would be the tricky thing, is how, what would a hybrid look like.
[00:44:00.964]Because we talked about the evolution of both monsters, now we're almost seeing zombies are becoming, well more like vampires, you could say.
[00:44:11.610]Especially with Warm Bodies, where the neurological function is dramatically increased, they physically look very different, clearly there is more kind of metabolism going on.
[00:44:21.443]But we've never seen kind of a, sexual reproduction, I can't recall a zombie, anything, where sexual reproduction has been a thing.
[00:44:32.800]But definitely with vampires, there has been. Doesn't mean it's impossible here, like from a fantasy perspective, but from kind of, what we know, if we can know anything about zombies, is they have a more catastrophic shut down of all biological functions.
[00:44:50.578]I would definitely say that just the physicality of reproduction would be one. So that might be almost a case where you'd have to engineer it.
[00:44:58.928]Which to me, brings to my mind, Underworld, where they gave up trying to naturally let a hybrid between a vampire and a werewolf happen and they engineered it.
[00:45:10.428]And they kept having mistakes, but they kept trying, kind of like, Alien and Predator.
[00:45:18.636]That was kind of a natural thing, but Alien, when they brought Alien back with Ripley, they had to keep cloning Ripley because she threw herself in a vat of molten iron.
[00:45:30.521]So how did they get her back? Um, but they had to keep cloning her and they kept making hundreds and hundreds of mistakes.
[00:45:35.946]That wasn't a natural process, so I'm thinking, that this kind of a hybrid, it's gonna take some real science. We're not there yet.
[00:45:47.303]We are not there yet, but that's the only way I could even remotely seeing it be possible.
[00:45:53.805]From a pop culture standpoint, not from a science standpoint, but from a narrative arc angle.
[00:45:58.498]Yeah, well another question would be, what self respecting vampire would want to mate with a zombie.
[00:46:06.584]I think that's the only benefit would be, what would the benefit be? If you could get a tangible benefit, which would be maybe the day walking component, maybe the not needing the down time, not having the sensitivity to certain things.
[00:46:19.953]But I think they have the brains to be like, 'What am I getting out of this? Because you look horrible.'
[00:46:26.170]But I think it would be benefit based, vampires strike me as being able to look at the numbers and literally look at the numbers.
[00:46:33.362]Well yeah, counting, 1, 2, 3. Come up with how many advantages.
[00:46:36.470]They're very strategic, it could be a strategic alliance for the sake of their stronger and better offsprings.
[00:46:44.475]It's possible, I mean I don't know, it's possible.
[00:46:48.132]Yeah, but I would not think, it would be totally possible, the genres of both, have become more intermingled.
[00:46:56.929]Especially with something like The New Deadwardians, and you're starting to see a lot more cross genre things.
[00:47:03.400]We see that of course with the entire True Blood universe. Where you have literally all the monsters or unhumans, except for, zombies.
[00:47:14.160]Not in the way that we see them now, I would almost say that we see them, the zombies throwing back to the '32, kind of the early, ya know, zombie enslaved, kind of mentality.
[00:47:23.179]But I wouldn't be surpised if you're gonna start seeing, oh my gosh what if we did this kind of quote unholy hybrid. That would, I bet you, mark my words people, 2016.
[00:47:36.710]There's gonna be some kind of horrifying zombie vampire crossover.
[00:47:40.469]And throw in Likens later on, we're gonna have a talk that is a trybrid, not just hybrid, trybrid.
[00:47:46.605]Yes, a monster madness bracket if you will.
[00:47:49.815]Yup, that would be maybe the next year's talk. One of those new ones. Thank you, good question.
[00:47:59.619]Anything else?

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Sci Pop Talks - Vampires vs. Zombies

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