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Moegreche
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Moegreche
3,829 posts
Duke

So I've been debating this questions with colleagues, friends, family, etc. and I just can't make up my mind about my own beliefs - much less reach a consensus with others.

So here's the basic question: What happens when a zombie bites a vampire?

Here are few things I think we have to take as given, otherwise the conversation can't get off the ground. First, both vampires and zombies are undead - meaning something has to die and then come back as one. Also, both can typically turn living things (typically humans) into vampires/werewolves through a bite.

The difference seems to be the explanation of transmission. Zombification is typically transmitted through a virus. Vampirism is less clear.

I'll leave it to you guys what (if anything) these things imply. But there's an additional question. If a zombie bites a vampire who then bites a human, does that human become a... zompire? After all, the vampire could carry the zombie virus, although not succumbing to it.

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HahiHa
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HahiHa
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Here are few things I think we have to take as given, otherwise the conversation can't get off the ground. First, both vampires and zombies are undead - meaning something has to die and then come back as one. Also, both can typically turn living things (typically humans) into vampires/werewolves through a bite.

I wonder where the "werewolves" bit came from? Probably unintentional ^^

If we assume that both are undead, we need to determine what part is dead. It is commonly assumed that zombies are dead bodies that move. This doesn't really make sense as even the 'zombies' in nature (organisms infected with a parasite that control their behaviour) are still alive; they need to be in order to be controlled. Similarly, the body of a vampire looks pretty much alive. So what exactly died? There is an easy way out of this problem: we assume the existence of a soul and pretend that this is the part that died. This makes the infected practically 'undead' even according to the common opinion (most games for instance would treat vampires and zombies as soulless). The fact that zombies appear decaying can be explained by loss of pain stimuli: people who cannot feel pain (a real condition) often don't realise they were injured and so don't treat the injury; in the worst case, once they notice, all that is left is amputation. A person infected by a zombie virus would not react to injuries which would consequently inflame and be exposed to infection by, for example, flesh eating bacteria.

Assuming both vampirism and zombyism (?) are transmitted through a pathogen, they could, depending on their nature, either compete each other or coexist. If they compete, only one will prevail, given that the host survives. If they coexist, I agree with ScrewTheLag: You'd have a vampire with a zombie behaviour. Lastly, if such a creature would bite a human, given that it does not kill it, the human would turn, according to your phrasing, into a 'zompire'.

That at least is one way I can make sense of the question.

spaceskeleton
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spaceskeleton
55 posts
Duchess

If you assume that vampires are immune to disease and one can only become a vampire by drinking its blood, then someone who's turned should not be affected, but a victim that survived an attack would become a zombie.
I like the idea of vampires spreading all sorts of tropical diseases like mosquitos.

HahiHa
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HahiHa
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@ScrewTheLag All behaviour-changing parasites known in real life need a living brain to work with. A worm cannot take over the neurological functions all by themselves, all they do is influence specific areas. Hence they can do nothing with a dead brain. They may not need all areas, so an infected person may lose some areas that are important for consciousness (at least I suppose so). All the parasite needs are the behavioural areas it affects and basic vital functions to keep the body alive.

I am also honestly not sure if there are 'zombifying' viruses; I am pretty sure they are mostly worms or in some cases parasitoid wasps.

My point is, from a scientific point of view, "undead" or even the definition of "death" is the ceasing of the generation of neuroelectric pulses from someone's brain (again, there's probably exceptions).

Just as a side note: this is the definition of brain death which is irreversible. There is also clinical death which can sometimes be reversed. Victims of parasitic worms are neither clinically nor brain dead.

I've never heard of two DNA modifications, phatogens, viruses, pandemias -the list goes on forever- that tried to compete between each other in humans, I've seen some combine into some lethal ****, but again! we're talking about something that hasn't happened (yet), so all we can do is speculate.

Right, maybe the more reasonable possible endings are simply 'dead' or 'zompire'.
pangtongshu
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pangtongshu
9,815 posts
Jester

Like you said, the zombie infection is a virus transmission. While vampires are technically undead, they still do have (at the very least) red blood cells, with the fact that Dracula was a raging sex fiend evidence to support that.
Most likely we would find ourselves with another zombie. Just a shell of the former self acting purely from the virus. In due time it'll detoriate like all other zombies.

Doombreed
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Doombreed
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Templar

I don't think the virus would even be transmitted. The vampire concept has not been as thoroughly developed as the zombie one...

And we also need to examine various cases of "zombie viruses":

Depending on whether the zombie virus can effectively transcend the species barrier (i.e. whether it can infect animals with the same or similar effects as human infection), the results can vary greatly

- If the zombie virus is restricted to human infection, then the vampires are obviously immune, for two important reasons:

1) Vampires have the accelerated healing factor. Meaning that nearly any injury, aside from some specific kinds of injuries (depending on the lore), leaves the vampire near-unaffected, due to the rate at which it is healed.
Given this healing factor, there is no reason to consider the chance that it doesn't work with diseases. An advanced healing factor such as this, is almost definite to be able to combat infections from viruses, bacterai, parasites, anything most likely.

2)Depending on the lore, vampires are sometimes not even considered human, so they may be well out of the virus' reach.

The latter case however is more interesting and the one more common in zombie culture: that the zombie virus can transcend the species barrier, effectively turning both humans and animals (most commonly dogs) in zombies.

In that case, it is not entirely clear how a vampire will be affected, if at all. However, assuming that it can be infected:

1) the healing factor comes into play again. It is important to note that it differs from just a highly advanced immune system, due to the rapid rate at which injuries are healed, be they fractured bones, smashed heads or even more gruesome and extreme in their nature

2) Drinking human blood significantly affects the vampires in almost every way. Often, vampires are depicted as in need of a constant supply of human blood, which makes it the equivalent of food for humans. That said, it is highly possible that a constant consumption of healthy human blood can regulate the effects of such a virus,, even if the healing factor cannot fight it.

3) Vampires however cannot drink infected human blood, sometimes just with a specific range of diseases, but mostly with any disease. Given that they cannot consume such blood, the effects such a consumption (if forced for example) would have on a vampire are unclear.

-- However one thing is clear in such cases:

if infection from the disease present in the blood can affect the vampire "consuming" it, then, in that case, the healing factor may not be able to actually combat any disease. As such, in that (admittedly specific) case, the vampires' accelerated healing may not be able to prevent the infection or slow the progress of such a virus.

In conclusion: this question breaks down into countless different cases. Many more conditions must be established for it to even be able to be discussed.

HahiHa
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HahiHa
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First, both vampires and zombies are undead - meaning something has to die and then come back as one.

@Moegreche What do you mean by "something has to die and then come back as one"? I'm asking myself whether an undead can even become undead a second time, and this may have some relevance depending on what you meant.
Moegreche
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Moegreche
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Duke

What do you mean by "something has to die and then come back as one"? I'm asking myself whether an undead can even become undead a second time, and this may have some relevance depending on what you meant.

Since both zombies and vampires and considered undead, I wanted to capture this notion. This seemed the most straightforward way. So, in both cases, you have a living organism (typically a human) who is bitten by a vampire or zombie. The person then dies, but they are reanimated as one of these creatures.

I was purposefully being vague with this idea because I do think the devil's in the details. I wanted as few of my assumptions as possible on the table, in case I was making a faulty assumption. But there's another problem in the background.

When a zombie is reanimated, it's hard to make the case that anything other than the corpse is brought back. In some zombie movies and books, the zombie can retain some basic features of the former person (e.g. their habits and places they like to frequent). But there's no real sense in which that person is reanimated.

With vampires, though, the story is a little different. Most of the time, the individual's memories are retained from before they died. I would also suggest that most of their personality and habits are retained as well. Obviously some things change, since they now crave blood and whatnot. But there's a sense in which the person is still there.

I don't know if this makes a difference for how the transmission and transformation take place. I don't even know if it's worth thinking about.

At any rate, your point is precisely why I don't know what would happen if a zombie bit a vampire. Since a vampire is already undead - i.e., the person has died and been reanimated - they can't die again. This seems to be a necessary condition for becoming an undead creature. And, as you point out, you can't become undead a second time. But, again, I'm not sure where I stand on this. Though I do like many of the points made so far on this.

Moegreche
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Moegreche
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Duke

Just want to clear out that again, for me, in these sort of discussions, even if they do exist, things like souls are out of the equation (once again, for me, so my theories on this may seem a little cruder than what they actually are, for example on this):

Yeah, I hadn't considered the notion of a soul in explaining the undead. I had hoped to clarify this in my previous post, but what I'm looking at is (I suppose) brain death. Like, actual legitimate death from which there is no return - save for the reanimation that occurs in vampirism and zombification.

Since we are talking about biological facts when it comes to zombies, but to unknown biology with vampires, there's no real way of knowing if all of what we're saying is true or we're just blabbering like a bunch of dummies.

I'm wondering if we should steer clear from biological facts. I mean, as they are presented in movies and books, zombies are a biological impossibility. And, as you pointed out, there really isn't a biological explanation for what's going on with vampires.

So I think we need to stick with well-established works of fiction to help guide the discussion. These are going to give us the information we need to make informed decisions about a completely fictional scenario.

FishPreferred
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FishPreferred
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Duke

First, both vampires and zombies are undead - meaning something has to die and then come back as one. Also, both can typically turn living things (typically humans) into vampires/werewolves through a bite.
Well, actually, neither of these should be transmissible through anything. A vampire is supposed to be a demon-possessed corpse, and a zombi is supposed to be someone with part of their soul removed by a bokor.
In the case of vampires, it was most often seen as a familial affliction, where someone who died from tuberculosis returned to drain the still-living relatives of their health, giving them tuberculosis symptoms. Contagion only seems to have been introduced by conflation with werewolf folk-tales and possibly the discovery of actual diseases (such as malaria) being transmitted by parasites, rather than airborne humors.
For zombies, the contagion idea began as a plot device for "zombie apocalypse" stories following the success of Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
Therefore, if a zombie bit a vampire, the only result should be an injured and/or irate vampire.
pangtongshu
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pangtongshu
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Jester

1) Vampires have the accelerated healing factor. Meaning that nearly any injury, aside from some specific kinds of injuries (depending on the lore), leaves the vampire near-unaffected, due to the rate at which it is healed.
Given this healing factor, there is no reason to consider the chance that it doesn't work with diseases. An advanced healing factor such as this, is almost definite to be able to combat infections from viruses, bacterai, parasites, anything most likely

Accelerated healing, not an accelerated immune system.

Doombreed
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Doombreed
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Templar

Accelerated healing, not an accelerated immune system.

How do you know they don't have both? my entire post is an analysis of the situation... I think though that until more parameters can be set, the question cannot be really answered.

I'm wondering if we should steer clear from biological facts. I mean, as they are presented in movies and books, zombies are a biological impossibility. And, as you pointed out, there really isn't a biological explanation for what's going on with vampires.

So I think we need to stick with well-established works of fiction to help guide the discussion. These are going to give us the information we need to make informed decisions about a completely fictional scenario.

Zombies and vampires vary greatly in the works of fiction, so even then, more conditions must be established.

pangtongshu
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pangtongshu
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Jester

I imagine it might have a similar effect to how Deadpool's accelerated healing works with his cancer

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