Vampire Martial Arts

[Wolfchild]

When I was writing my little bit of Fan Fiction, Letters, I devoted a bit of detail to the physical mechanics of how exactly Eli attacked one of her victims. The way I constructed the attack in my mind was very much informed by my experience with martial arts. This caused me to start wondering more broadly about vampires and martial arts.

In my mind martial arts (at least the physical part - the spiritual aspects don't really apply) is all about developing efficiency of action. This is why a lot of the Chinese martial arts model themselves after animals, and in particular after predators. Predators have a natural efficiency of action. Their skills take maximum advantage of their anatomies in conjunction with that of their prey, and they use them to create situations to maximize their chances of success and their efficacy in killing. So I started to wonder, how would this reasoning apply to our favorite predator? What would you end up with if you applied this philosophy of martial arts-style efficiency of action to vampires?

First of all, for a vampire in JAL's universe, staying under the radar is critical. Long chases of prey would be too likely to attract attention, so the most efficient attacks would be from short range. Surprise attacks from hiding after either laying in wait or stalking, or attacks after luring the prey in would be preferable. We see Eli do both these style of attacks. Once the attack is begun, the object would be to get as much blood as quickly as possible while at the same time drawing as little attention as possible.

Ideally the attack would incapacitate the donor as quickly as possible, but it would also have to take into account the harvesting of blood. Towards this end, the attack should leave the donor alive and conscious for as long as possible. Preferably, the attack should also be terrifying to the donor. It would be literally impossible for a vampire to suck much blood out of the donor: the veins would likely just collapse and pinch off the blood flow. The best method would be to have the donor's heart pump the blood out to be ingested. Having the donor be conscious and terrified would serve this purpose well, causing an elevated heart rate that would stay elevated for as long as possible.

So an incapacitating would necessarily involve a knowledge of grappling at close quarters. Raining blows on the donor would serve no useful purpose for a vampire. In this grappling, the vampire would likely have a large advantage in speed and strength, so finesse arts redirecting the donor's own energy such as those favored by judo are likely to be of little use to a vampire most of the time. The vampire would want to close and take physical control as quickly as possible. I think that perhaps the Wing Chun concept of getting physical connection would be closer to something that would be useful to a vampire. The breaking of bones could be counter-productive, as this could cause hemorrhaging and waste blood that could otherwise be ingested. Since it will soon be perceived correctly by the donor as a death struggle, compliance moves like arm bars or other control holds that rely on pain would not be the most efficient. Physical control moves that use leverage or just brute strength would be preferred, so long as they control the at least the arms of the donor, and preferably also stifle their cries (if necessary). However, incapacitating a conscious human during a death struggle could make the breaking of bones unavoidable. But when you're a vampire, there is no sense in crying over spilt blood.

This only applies to a Lindqvist vampire in a normal state. A vampire newly awakened from a long sleep would apparently not have the advantage of strength, and perhaps not also not the advantage of speed. Now something like the skills of judo or various grappling concepts like from Brazilian jiu-jitsu could become important to the vampire. Not having a strength advantage means that technique alone must be relied upon. The vampire would want to use its own weight and that of the donor to best advantage, with leverage and re-direction being of paramount importance.

It is not clear how quickly a vampire would regain its strength from the first feeding. Would it happen instantly, during the feeding itself? In that case, only the first few seconds of the attack are critical. Once the strength comes flowing back, finishing the attack is less challenging. If it has a delay of more than a minute or so, the vampire must get into a position of physical dominance and be able to maintain for quite a while without the benefit of superior strength. Perhaps in this case the vampire would forgo the luxury of having the donor remain conscious for as long as possible. Now maybe a knock-out blow would be the preferred route. So in this case, knowledge of the mechanics of maximizing the power of a blow, as taught by every martial art in the world, would become important to a vampire.

Okay, I will admit these were some dark musings indeed. All that I can say is, "John Ajvide started it."

Maybe I should write a FAQ: Vampirism For Dummies.

[gattoparde59]

The actual examples given in the novel include some of what you are talking about. The attacks on Jocke and Virginia come to mind. I think beyond physical skills there is an element of deception with both Jocke and Oskar. There is also the suggestion of some kind of dark hypnotic glamour at work. That is certainly suggested by the aborted attack on Oskar and the old woman with cancer.

Other vampire stories like Dracula and Carmilla suggest that the hypnotic powers of the vampire have an element of sexual seduction.

If the aim is to kill without drawing attention to yourself, the choice of victim by Hakan seem very poor. Killing a young boy on the way home from school, or at a bathhouse is guaranteed to raise a hue and cry and put Eli at terrible risk. Better to single out a wino or a bag lady, or prostitute, someone who will not be missed. The human equivalent of the very old or very young member of the herd of prey animals.

I would argue that being a vampire actually calls for more social and psychological awareness than simply physical prowess.

Seems like your thinking was heavily influenced by the film version of Let the Right One In.

[lombano]

I think the most efficient attack would be, for a an Eli-sized vampire, to jump on the back, clamping the person's arms to the torso with her legs (which wouldn't even require such exceptional strength), one hand over the mouth, so that the victim can breathe but not scream, and which would also improve the vampire's grip on the victim, and then biting the neck on the side opposite the arm of the hand used to silence the victim. This would instantly silence and incapacitate the victim completely, except for the ability to walk, but even that would go if the landing is hard enough to knock the person over, which would have the advantage that, with the victim lying flat, the blood wouldn't be working against gravity to reach the neck. Ideally you'd want the legs raised, but you can't have everything.

If the aim is to kill without drawing attention to yourself, the choice of victim by Hakan seem very poor. Killing a young boy on the way home from school, or at a bathhouse is guaranteed to raise a hue and cry and put Eli at terrible risk. Better to single out a wino or a bag lady, or prostitute, someone who will not be missed. The human equivalent of the very old or very young member of the herd of prey animals.

I would argue that being a vampire actually calls for more social and psychological awareness than simply physical prowess.

Agreed. Prostitutes and the homeless would be the best targets.

[cmfireflies]

what is this? vampire advice 101?

[sauvin]

what is this? vampire advice 101?

Maybe not so much "Effective Vampirism for Dummies", but I think Wolfchild is on to something - a study of vampire attack strategies could yield some interesting insights into vampire psychology

[gattoparde59]

My thinking is influenced by the real life equivalent of vampires, serial killers.

I saw this film about the Green River Killer.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1100911/

Generally these sort of people are very boring individuals, unlike the Hollywood version such as Hannibal Lecter. The Green River killer had a set technique that he used over and over to kill prostitutes and being such a bland person he could easily hide in plain site.

On the whole, I think I would rather read about vampires and werewolves.

[genie47]

Hey Wolf,

Been watching or rewatching Kung Fu Hustle?

[gary13136]

I think, both from the novel and the movie, that Eli has pretty well mastered the art of sneak attack. And when you consider how Eli picked up Hakan, she might also use simple long-term observation. Perhaps when she is in top form physically, she might spend time watching people wherever she lives, picks out a candidate with a regular night-time routine (walking the dog, drinking too much, etc.), and when she's hungry, just drop out of the sky or a tree.

Perhaps the routine she used with Jocke is what she uses when she is weak; a combination of deception and, when she has gained the sympathy of a passerby, sneak attack. I think Eli would only use strength in an emergency, perhaps to save herself from a difficult situation. When Oskar's life was in danger, she certainly used strength backed up by exceptional violence.

[Wolfchild]

Yes, but what are the physical steps that go into the actual attack? JAL created his vampirism as (mostly) a natural biological organism. So if a vampire is a creature of nature, it must have made biological adaptations to its role as a predator - certain inherent skills and habits that will maximize its chances for success. I'm not talking about any one attack. Rather, I want to talk about what tool set would a vampire have evolved? Since in general it has the human form to work with, and also it must develop skills to attack humans, well, human versus human attacks are exactly what martial arts concern themselves with. Would natural adaptation have provided a vampire with skills similar to those of a martial artist?

[sauvin]

Yes, but what are the physical steps that go into the actual attack? JAL created his vampirism as (mostly) a natural biological organism. So if a vampire is a creature of nature, it must have made biological adaptations to its role as a predator - certain inherent skills and habits that will maximize its chances for success. I'm not talking about any one attack. Rather, I want to talk about what tool set would a vampire have evolved? Since in general it has the human form to work with, and also it must develop skills to attack humans, well, human versus human attacks are exactly what martial arts concern themselves with. Would natural adaptation have provided a vampire with skills similar to those of a martial artist?

Lindqvist's vampire may have biological aspects but retains much of the traditional supernatural, such as apparent immortality, inhuman strength and speed, flight and shape shifting. We don't get a good sense of its life cycle or how the mechanisms of radiation, mutation and some of these other inkhorn words I had to learn in biology work or might apply. In fact, we're not even sure that there are such things as individual vampires, just different people hosting whatever this biological phenomenon is - evolutionary processes may not apply if the exact same organism is what infects all its human hosts.

If it's mostly (or entirely) supernatural in origin, we could speculate every day for a thousand years and never touch a truth we might not be able to understand if we glimpsed it.

As an initial sally into this area, I'll suppose that in some distant past *some* organism or other discovered that human blood has something it finds particularly advantageous, and that hijacking human hosts facilitates the hunting process. My own impression of this organism is that it's just a passenger, a kind of back seat driver that only ever completely takes over under a surfeit of a limited number of stimuli, it's otherwise more than content to let its host do all the driving, since presumably its host knows best how to coexist with what the creature needs and how to hunt it.

Being no biologist of any sort, this is as far as I can guess, though. I'm at a total loss to try to explain (even in fiction!) how such things as telepathy and shapeshifting might have evolved, since I'm not aware that these things occur in any other terrestrial species.