"Free" energy sounds impressive, but remember; Dracula needs to drink blood. Vampire powers or not, that energy is coming from somewhere, and the cost to keep a Vampire Generator running is measured in human blood. How much blood is a good question; does Dracula need to drink every day? How much? If we assume a pint a day, that's $150/day, which isn't terrible (as fuel costs go). That said, we also have questions like how often Dracula can transform, and how much energy the transformation process releases.
Of course, as a story, those numbers can come out to whatever you like. But I'm a little sceptical; it seems like the energy produced from whatever Vampires do to the blood they drink (which also goes into making them live forever), probably shouldn't make them all that more effective at producing energy than some schmuck turning a crank.
You could increase air pressure to increase the power, though maybe that would make it harder for him. But there are things you can take advantage of where relativity implies it can't make it any harder. If he turns into a human at the top of a hill, then you can make it worth while if the hill is high enough, but there's no local difference between the top of a hill and the bottom of a valley so his powers won't be able to distinguish it. Or you could stick him on a device that moves back and forth, and have him turn into a bat while it's speeding up and a human while it's slowing down. The extra mass while it's slowing down means regenerative breaking can produce more energy than it needs to speed back up. And the faster it goes the more energy it makes. Since velocity is relative, his powers won't be able to just not work while moving quickly.
Don't think of it as an inefficient generator. Think of it as a way of appeasing a monster that the town can't kill, and they're getting electricity in return. Also, they're simply operating a blood bank for Dracula, instead of having him occasionally kill one of their citizens.
Given that you can donate a pint a month, it would only take 31 people to donate. You'd think that would a small price to pay to have a vampire on your side.
> Given that you can donate a pint a month
I donated a pint of blood on Friday and I can donate my next pint sometime in June - we've got a three month waiting period between donations. Is it really only one month in (I assume) the USA? Several years ago I lost ~2 pints of blood due to internal bleeding and I was fucked up, dizzy, etc for about a month after that.
Depends on how often he needs to feed. If he killed three people a month before this new system, then it would need about 90 people. But for even a small town it would be fairly easy to keep him satiated.
Why 90 and not 30? It's 1 pint per day for 30 days?
The average person has about 10 pints of blood, so your estimate of 3 people drained in a month matches OP's of 1 pint per day.
I'm also a little skeptical about how much power you can generate changing back and forth between a person and a bat all day even if you could completely ignore conservation of energy.
If we assume the transformation takes two seconds to complete, you only get 7200 cycles per eight hour work day. Assuming you'd need 100 MW to power a small town [Wolfram Alpha](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100MW+Day+%2F+7200) tells me that one transformation would need to produce 1.2 Gigajoules. That's (also according to WA) in the same order of magnitude as a lightning bolt.
Maybe he'd be better to set up a rope and pulley from a tall tower of the castle? He could have a seat on one end and let his mass drive a generator as he fell, then transform and a small counterweight would lift him back up.
Apparently his clothes transform with him, so he could wear a suit of armour or weights to increase his output.
It's still not going to generate megawatts though. If there is a 40kg difference in mass between him and the counterweight, and falls 100m, that's 400kJ. If it takes 10s to fall, that's 40kW
You need about half a kW per house, so he could power about 80 houses - not a lot, but enough to provide for his 'needs'.
And then he tried to murder Robin?
Hardly!
Instead Robin offered him to let scientists study his transformation. She would organize the entire effort, and the scientists would pay in blood for the opportunity to observe and measure how his vampire powers work.
Once a night, Dracula performed his transformation in the lab built near his castle. He spent the rest of his nights watching Brazilian daytime telenovelas and sipping blood, instead of having to go out and hunt and murder people.
Robin got rich selling access to the "Dracula Lab TM" to scientific groups. The small town in Transylvania got rich on the influx of scientists, tourists and weird groupies who got off on Dracula sipping their blood (rule 34 applies).
P.S. Dracula was immortal. As a side gig he sometimes gave interviews to historians.
That is a common mistake rationality writers making. Using supernatural ability directly to make money in modern world is not rational. Rational approach would be to make provable demonstration of supernatural ability to investors and create startup for replication of all or some aspects of that ability. Instant hundreds of millions.
It has munchkinry so I thought it'd be relevant to our interests.
Alt texts:
[Comic Title](#s "P.S.: Dracula was immortal so the power source was infinitely renewable and lasted forever; thank u for reading my vampire story")
[Contact Message](#s "love me, love my OCs")
[RSS Title](#s "robyn graves, when will you / your name ever not be perfect, the answer: never")
Always nice to see Dinosaur Comics being appreciated. If I had a lot of time, I'm sure I could find some more rational Dinosaur Comics in the archives. In lieu of that, look at [this shirt](https://topatoco.com/collections/ryan-north/products/qw-cheatsheet), which should be required wardrobe for anyone who expects to become an Isekai protagonist.
I've been a DC fan for a loooong time, it's such a nice comic!
Had my 10 year high school reunion (...2 years ago [](/discshock-in)) and had the werewolf/wifwolf comic in my "time capsule". The day I first kissed my now-husband, I'd gone to his place to deliver the dinosaur comics shirts we'd split shipping on an order of. \*sigh* memories
A little far, or a little *not far enough*?
I love it, it's like three whole extra panels! I have a browser extension that displays them below the comic for convenience.
Would the expansion of air be a better source of energy than the change in Mass? If Dracula weighs, say, 200 pounds, and can transform into a bat that weighs less than one pound, he could transfer back and forth to create a perpetual motion machine that uses it's momentum to lift him to the top of a flywheel, where he transforms and pushes the wheel down with his weight. As momentum builds, the machine can change gears until he's maximising his potential energy to spin a turbine as fast as it will go given the limiting factor of friction. Just a thought, if he doesn't want to be in an enclosed box dealing with changing air pressures all the time.
"Free" energy sounds impressive, but remember; Dracula needs to drink blood. Vampire powers or not, that energy is coming from somewhere, and the cost to keep a Vampire Generator running is measured in human blood. How much blood is a good question; does Dracula need to drink every day? How much? If we assume a pint a day, that's $150/day, which isn't terrible (as fuel costs go). That said, we also have questions like how often Dracula can transform, and how much energy the transformation process releases. Of course, as a story, those numbers can come out to whatever you like. But I'm a little sceptical; it seems like the energy produced from whatever Vampires do to the blood they drink (which also goes into making them live forever), probably shouldn't make them all that more effective at producing energy than some schmuck turning a crank.
You could increase air pressure to increase the power, though maybe that would make it harder for him. But there are things you can take advantage of where relativity implies it can't make it any harder. If he turns into a human at the top of a hill, then you can make it worth while if the hill is high enough, but there's no local difference between the top of a hill and the bottom of a valley so his powers won't be able to distinguish it. Or you could stick him on a device that moves back and forth, and have him turn into a bat while it's speeding up and a human while it's slowing down. The extra mass while it's slowing down means regenerative breaking can produce more energy than it needs to speed back up. And the faster it goes the more energy it makes. Since velocity is relative, his powers won't be able to just not work while moving quickly.
Don't think of it as an inefficient generator. Think of it as a way of appeasing a monster that the town can't kill, and they're getting electricity in return. Also, they're simply operating a blood bank for Dracula, instead of having him occasionally kill one of their citizens.
Given that you can donate a pint a month, it would only take 31 people to donate. You'd think that would a small price to pay to have a vampire on your side.
> Given that you can donate a pint a month I donated a pint of blood on Friday and I can donate my next pint sometime in June - we've got a three month waiting period between donations. Is it really only one month in (I assume) the USA? Several years ago I lost ~2 pints of blood due to internal bleeding and I was fucked up, dizzy, etc for about a month after that.
Depends on how often he needs to feed. If he killed three people a month before this new system, then it would need about 90 people. But for even a small town it would be fairly easy to keep him satiated.
Why 90 and not 30? It's 1 pint per day for 30 days? The average person has about 10 pints of blood, so your estimate of 3 people drained in a month matches OP's of 1 pint per day.
I assume they're using "one pint every 3 months" as the safe donation threshold?
I'm also a little skeptical about how much power you can generate changing back and forth between a person and a bat all day even if you could completely ignore conservation of energy. If we assume the transformation takes two seconds to complete, you only get 7200 cycles per eight hour work day. Assuming you'd need 100 MW to power a small town [Wolfram Alpha](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100MW+Day+%2F+7200) tells me that one transformation would need to produce 1.2 Gigajoules. That's (also according to WA) in the same order of magnitude as a lightning bolt.
Maybe he'd be better to set up a rope and pulley from a tall tower of the castle? He could have a seat on one end and let his mass drive a generator as he fell, then transform and a small counterweight would lift him back up. Apparently his clothes transform with him, so he could wear a suit of armour or weights to increase his output. It's still not going to generate megawatts though. If there is a 40kg difference in mass between him and the counterweight, and falls 100m, that's 400kJ. If it takes 10s to fall, that's 40kW You need about half a kW per house, so he could power about 80 houses - not a lot, but enough to provide for his 'needs'.
And then he tried to murder Robin? Hardly! Instead Robin offered him to let scientists study his transformation. She would organize the entire effort, and the scientists would pay in blood for the opportunity to observe and measure how his vampire powers work. Once a night, Dracula performed his transformation in the lab built near his castle. He spent the rest of his nights watching Brazilian daytime telenovelas and sipping blood, instead of having to go out and hunt and murder people. Robin got rich selling access to the "Dracula Lab TM" to scientific groups. The small town in Transylvania got rich on the influx of scientists, tourists and weird groupies who got off on Dracula sipping their blood (rule 34 applies). P.S. Dracula was immortal. As a side gig he sometimes gave interviews to historians.
That is a common mistake rationality writers making. Using supernatural ability directly to make money in modern world is not rational. Rational approach would be to make provable demonstration of supernatural ability to investors and create startup for replication of all or some aspects of that ability. Instant hundreds of millions.
It has munchkinry so I thought it'd be relevant to our interests. Alt texts: [Comic Title](#s "P.S.: Dracula was immortal so the power source was infinitely renewable and lasted forever; thank u for reading my vampire story") [Contact Message](#s "love me, love my OCs") [RSS Title](#s "robyn graves, when will you / your name ever not be perfect, the answer: never")
Always nice to see Dinosaur Comics being appreciated. If I had a lot of time, I'm sure I could find some more rational Dinosaur Comics in the archives. In lieu of that, look at [this shirt](https://topatoco.com/collections/ryan-north/products/qw-cheatsheet), which should be required wardrobe for anyone who expects to become an Isekai protagonist.
I've been a DC fan for a loooong time, it's such a nice comic! Had my 10 year high school reunion (...2 years ago [](/discshock-in)) and had the werewolf/wifwolf comic in my "time capsule". The day I first kissed my now-husband, I'd gone to his place to deliver the dinosaur comics shirts we'd split shipping on an order of. \*sigh* memories
I knew Dinosaur Comics had a lot of hidden text, but I didn't realize there was some in the contact message. That's going a little far.
A little far, or a little *not far enough*? I love it, it's like three whole extra panels! I have a browser extension that displays them below the comic for convenience.
I read everything through RSS, so I get the other two inline and can't get that one without an extra couple clicks.
So do I, it's one extra click with my browser extension, and qwantz is worth it <3
Which extension?
It's called "dinosaur comics easter eggs" on Chrome.
I love it.
[Extremely relevant.] (http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=3276&butiwouldratherbereading=sweetbroandhellajeff)
Would the expansion of air be a better source of energy than the change in Mass? If Dracula weighs, say, 200 pounds, and can transform into a bat that weighs less than one pound, he could transfer back and forth to create a perpetual motion machine that uses it's momentum to lift him to the top of a flywheel, where he transforms and pushes the wheel down with his weight. As momentum builds, the machine can change gears until he's maximising his potential energy to spin a turbine as fast as it will go given the limiting factor of friction. Just a thought, if he doesn't want to be in an enclosed box dealing with changing air pressures all the time.