"Vampires can’t exist. There’d be detailed records in the archives; they couldn’t possibly evade detection by the state for any significant period. Besides which...there’d be corpses everywhere. Human blood is a poor nutrient source; it’s about 60 percent plasma by volume and only provides about 900 calories per liter, so your hypothetical blood-sucking fiend is going to have to drink about two and a half liters per day. Those calories don’t come in the form of useful stuff like glucose and fat: it’s mostly protein from circulating red blood cells. Dracula would have to exsanguinate a victim every day just to stay alive, and would suffer from chronic ketoacidosis. The total number of intentional homicides for the whole country is around 700 a year; a single vampire would cause a 50 percent spike in the murder rate. Or they’d have to take transfusion-sized donations about two thousand times a year."
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Fantasy authorsNovelists from EnglandPeople from LeedsScience fiction authors from EnglandGame designers
Original Language: English
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Chapter 1, “Prologue: One Month Ago” (p. 2; ellipsis represents elision of one sentence of description)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Stross
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Charles Stross
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