Halloween Fun

Time for some Halloween fun with numbers. In a paper written a few months ago, a University of Central Florida physics professor puts Halloween legends up to the scrutiny of modern science, offering critiques of the Hollywood portrayals of ghosts, zombies, and vampires. The latter is the most interesting. Using the (conservative by the movie's standards) assumption that each vampire feeds on one human and reproduces one vampire per month, the authors show that if the first vampire appeared in the year 1600, the human population would be approaching zero within about two years.

Of course, what he misses is that vampires may feed much more than they reproduce. In the Buffyverse, for instance, vampires seem to feed on humans almost nightly, but reproduce other vampires perhaps once a decade or less. And of course, he isn't considering the reduction in vampire population a Slayer or two might have....