General vampire convenience question..

[seawasp]

I had no problems assuming that somehow my Fantastically Wealthy vampire, Verne Domingo, could get blood when he wanted it, but just how hard, or easy, would it be for someone with ordinary middle-class resources to regularly acquire human blood?

Comments

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

I assume you mean NOT from simply biting someone?

Not easily, would be my guess. Your everyday Joe isn't going to have easy access to a blood bank.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

If you could figure out a way to suborn a doctor, quite easy. You get the doctor to put you in as someone living with one of the several blood diseases/disorders that are treated with weekly transfusions, and bob's your uncle.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I know someone who has this (http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1082839-overview), for instance, who does his own weekly transfusion at home.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Or your suborned doctor could set the vampire up with people who need their blood drained for medical reasons. (Polycytemia vera, secondary polycytemia, hemochromatosis. Probably some more.)

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

That is brilliant!

[shanejayell.livejournal.com]

Obviously, biting people.

Break into hospitals? Are we assuming traditional vampire abilities like hypnosis or shapechanging and such? I could see various ways those abilities could let you get blood.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

How difficult would it be to steal blood from a college blood drive or something similar?

[shanejayell.livejournal.com]

Or even set up your own fake blood drive? Tho admittedly getting the equipment together etc would be a bitch for the specified 'ordinary middle-class resources' situation.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

If the vampire had any kind of job or any attachments to associations that would hold a blood drive, it would be much easier to set it up and steal any needed blood.

[dalesql.livejournal.com]

Getting human blood for someone who is not wealthy or somehow connected to a blood bank in current america will be difficult to accomplish on a regular basis. Human blood is a fantastically expensive and fairly profitable enterprise for groups like the american red cross. Hundreds of dollars to get a blood transfusion at the hospital.

Big question is how fresh, whole and uncontaminated the vampire needs the blood. Blood from donors is very quickly, nearly always the same day, processed into the various blood products, each of which has various preservative chemicals added. Packed red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, gamma globulin, and platelets, just off the top of my head.

This blood is also very closely tracked and monitored. Not because it is a high theft item, but because the FDA requires all blood products to be traceable back to the donor and every processing step along the way. This is in case the donor ends up with an illness that might have been incubating at time of donation, or if there is a processing problem along the way that makes the blood product unsafe... umm.. more unsafe.

Blood products that have timed out, and no longer can be transfused into patients are sold to various medical companies that use these blood products in research or to manufacture some medical substance or another, such as culture media.

So if the vamp needs more or less fresh human blood, they need a connection into a blood bank operation that is able to regularly divert fresh blood from the normal production stream to the vamp. Or if the vamp is able to make use of blood that is rejected during initial screening for one reason or another. Blood that tests positive for various diseases for one, or has it's chemistry way off-kilter. I don't know how closely tracked blood that has been rejected before processing.

Call your local red cross blood bank, tell them you are a writer working on a vampire book and would like to learn how a blood donor and bank operation works for this purpose. If they don't laugh at you or just hang up the phone in your ear, you probably will find out what you need.

[dsrtao]

Hundreds of dollars per fix, closely tracked, legal barriers... the only difference from any number of illegal drugs is that this one isn't in such high demand on the street.

If we assume that vampires are immune to most blood-borne illnesses, then one bribes a nurse at a hospital or Red Cross unit to take contributions that would otherwise have failed, mark it bad on the records, and slip the pint out the back door.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I like this idea. In fact, the first thing a newly turned vampire should do would be to call a blood bank, introduce itself as a writer, and chat them up about blood.

I'm pretty sure that almost anyone at a hospital or blood bank could work out some scheme that diverted a minor amount of blood, with or without paperwork (there are good arguments either way). The interesting bits will be the things the Red Cross workers know that we've overlooked.

How much do you need, and what is your budget?

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

A tremendous amount depends on just HOW MUCH human blood your vampires need. If they need 1 pint per month there would be no difficulty at all going to skid row, or posting notices on college campuses, offering $100 per pint. That's in the range of "a pack of cigarettes per day" cost. But if they need a pint every day ($3k per month, $36k per year) it's going to be a huge stretch of "ordinary middle-class resources" to do it that way, and alternatives need to be explored.

There's also the question of "staying under the radar". Others have mentioned working at a blood bank and stealing it. If the vampire is able to get by on 1 pint per month, marking a single pint per month as "contaminated" or "donor put DO NOT USE sticker on paperwork" or such would probably be fairly easy to get away with. If he needs a pint every day, that would be a HUGE jump in the reject rate and would raise a red flag pretty quickly.

Much might also depend on how "ordinary appearing" the vampire wants to be. If we assume blood costs him a middle figure ($100 per week, not per day or per month) and he isn't trying to appear to eat 3 regular meals per day, the grocery money could cover the blood expenses reasonably easily. But if he is trying to pass as human and the cost of blood is on top of all normal "middle class expenses", things geta a bit tougher. But is this guy springing for Cell Phones at $100/month or more? Cable TV with a few Premium Channels? Getting a new car every 4 years? A lot of the "ordinary middle class" people I know are spending quite a bit on things I don't consider to be necessities. Squeezing out $5k/year wouldn't be too hard, but $15k might be difficult (think college tuition for a kid - that takes planning ahead, not petty cash).

So give a bit more information on how vampires work in your world and we can give a bit better assessments of how difficult it is for middle class vampires to get their blood without resorting to simple assault.

Re: How much do you need, and what is your budget?

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

$100/pint would be three times as high as what for-profit blood banks pay in the US.

[kira-snugz.livejournal.com]

as easy way to access it would be to damage the transfer bags so that once they fill up past a certain point, they dribble. whoops can't use this 1/4 pint, can't use that 1/2 pint. but because its human blood, it will be carried off and disposed of properly. if you did it at a rate of say one bag per event, you should get a pint or so a day.

and too, through human error, bags are dropped, and they break. so someone with in a blood drive orginization would be able to add an extra pint here or there, simply by 'spilling' a little, transferring the blood and faking a pressure tear in the original bag.

and in a busy hetic night in an er, or surgery ward alot more accidents happen. jumpy nurses knock over iv stands, overly tired nurses attach the bags wrong, freaked out patients and family members cause accidents.

there s the set of wanna be vamps who drink each others blood. and too, are people that cut. 'man i had a bad night last night, i cut a little too deep and so and so helped me get cleaned up and took care of me when i was dizzy' in highschool, in my circle of friends there wasn't a week that went by where i wasn't washing too much blood out of one or another persons sheets/jeans/floor. had i been a vampire i would have done just fine. which is really sad when i think about it.

theres also the good old fashioned one night stand- if you vamp can make the bite a little pleasurable, a couple drinks once a month at a bar is well within the reach of a middle income person. have a couple friends with benefits even, and feed every 2nd or 3rd time. this is how i played it in my vamp larps. colleged aged looking vampires + drunk people = easy feeding, provided you aren't killing everytime you feed.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

As people have said, how much blood is the important thing. Even someone with a very menial job of the right sort at a hospital or lab studying human diseases has quite a bit of access to blood, but only in small quantities at a time, and even with the amount of everything lost to bad paperwork, more than a mouthful a day would be noticed.

Probably the best route, as people have been saying, is to get a diagnosis for a disease that requires regular transfusions or to start/get involved with a charity specializing in blood drives.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

One approach that avoids all the issues of officialdom would be to acquire a large group of friends who are willing to donate regularly, and someone (probably yourself) with the training to insert the needle and so on. How large a group of friends depends on how much blood you need how often, of course.

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

I have no information to add. But does this mean you're writing more in the JW-verse?

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Of course, if there aren't any sterility or freshness limitations, the really broke vampire could parlay a janitorial job--especially one at a large company employing mostly women under 50, like a fashion magazine or whatever--into a steady source.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

(For those readers who have not had this experience themselves: the bathrooms in office buildings generally contain a small bin in each stall for the disposal of tampons and pads.)

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

An additional irony would be that the employers would think this person was the most fabulous janitor ever, as "doesn't empty the tampon bins promptly" is a pet peeve many women have about their office's janitor/cleaning service.

[gary-jordan.livejournal.com]

I hope I'm not the only one making faces and shuddering. At the same time, I commend you for thinking outside the lines. I thought of four quick puns to go with your idea and I'm doing my best not to share them.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

I think one would have to be pretty broke and pretty desperate to want to scavenge food from bathrooms, yeah.

But I doubt vampires are squeamish--they're already drinking people's blood, and menstrual blood is no more germy than any other blood.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Of course the truly entrepreneurial vampire could turn the bug into a feature, a la the marketers of Kopi Luwak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak)!

[rasmusb.livejournal.com]

If I am remembering my elementary school health class correctly -- most of what ends up in that bin -- isn't blood. Well at least not a high percentage of the .. um ... tissue.

Of course I could be mis-remembering or they were lying so as to not freak out a room of 11 year old girls. :)

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

The key here is VOLUME! See above about the civet-cat-poo coffee.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

The average is 36% blood, with the rest being tissue and mucus.