![Best Way to Kill a Vampire [Think Tank]](https://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Think-Tank-Vampire-Carousel.jpg)
Stakes (Stokes)
You know, I was going to write about something more outré. Something like “leaving a pile of grain on the doorstep,” or “the love of a good woman” (for which see either version of Nosferatu). I mean, stakes through the heart? Who gets vanilla ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s? But then I got to pondering, and I decided that having a think tank about vampire killing that didn’t mention stakes would be like having a think tank about key changes that didn’t mention Living on a Prayer. Here’s why they’re the best:
1) They provide mechanical advantage. I’m not sure how to calculate exactly how much (Shechner, you still out there? Drop some science on us!), but it’s more than a little. After all what is a stake but a specialized inclined plane? Speaking of which, I used to know a guy in college that people called “The Inclined Plane,” because he was simple, and kind of a tool.
2) In a pinch, you can use them to hold up a tent. Try doing that with the love of a good woman.
3) They are attested to by folkloric accounts. Were you aware that the original purpose of the stake was simply to pop the vampire, which, gorged on blood, had swollen to Mr. Creosote-like proportions? Do you find this image highly disgusting?
4) If you are designing a comic book character who fights vampires, you can give him a totally flipping sweet missile launcher that shoots stakes instead of missiles, or maybe even stake-missles that shoot stakes, like, everywhere when they explode. (Whether this counts as an advantage depends on whether or not you are currently a twelve year old boy.)
5) Most importantly, they work. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that out of 100 corpses staked through the heart in a controlled, double blind study, not one rose from the dead to feast on the blood of the living. So there. The stake is the best method. I just proved it. Statistically.
This even sort of looks like a graph. Can't argue with that.
Two things:
1) that Kim Jong Il pic may have set a new standard for OTI photoshop excellence
2) when I ended my entry with “I just proved it. Statistically,” I didn’t realize that everyone else was going to make a “here’s an official sounding statistic that I just made up” joke too. (I for one blame John Hodgman.)
That’s no Photoshop. It’s an actual piece of North Korean propaganda.
stakes because all you really need is a bunch of pencils.
For style points alone you have to go with the codpiece gun worn by Sex Machine (Tom Savini) in From Dusk Til Dawn.
*Dons nerd pedantry cape*
Stakes will multiply the force applied to the blunt end by the ratio of the area of the blunt end over the area of the point. So the pointier the stake the better. One might wonder why vampire hunters seem to go with crudely carved stakes rather than breaking out a whittling knife. Didn’t Blade use steel ones or something?
Diggery wasn’t killed by the Goblet of Fire, Fenzel, it was the Killing Curse, Avada Kedavra. GOSH, get it RIGHT. ;p
I say make them gorge themselves, causing massive amounts of obesity and heart disease. Then they’ll die off. How? Throw enough people with this in their path, and they won’t be able to resist themselves because of the flow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiopathic_thrombocytopenic_purpura
@stokes
You tell me you’ve never pitched a tent thinking about the love of a good woman?
A Danish Christmas tree. I know what you are thinking, why a Danish tree, what is so special about a that? Well, we Danes love to decorate everything with our flag, especially Christmas trees. And what do our flag look like? That’s right, it’s red with a white cross, as in a Christian cross. So a Danish Christmas tree will ad a light family friendly tone to the whole slaying business and if everything else fails, it makes wood handily available for producing some stakes.
Surely the best way to kill a vampire is to have them watch Twilight on DVD at night? That way they will piss themselves laughing so hard, they forget it’s morning and then ‘random burning noise’ Dust on the floor….
Sorted thanks to wee Eddie :)
The key point to remember is that vampires are immortal, thus we need something that is similarly everlasting and monolithic if we truly want to counter the threat. Dropping one at a time with stakes or Korean despots won’t cut it when the other vampires can put dozens at risk in one night of feeding. It is well known that the only certain things are death and taxes. Death won’t work obviously, so clearly we need to get the government involved and legislate them into oblivion.
Ergo I conclude that tort reform is the best means of killing vampires. And since it’s the government, we can co-opt some of the advantages of using other vampires while we’re at it.
Gab would you believe there’s actually an amazing book called Fat White Vampire Blues that basically takes that idea to amusing heights?
Marmaduke: Wow. Read a blurb about it, and wow. Heh.