The Debate
One question that has been coming up with increasing frequency is whether vampire hunting and hiding in the shadows will change with the invention of synthetic blood?
A number of biopharmaceuticals companies are working on the creation of synthetic blood and they've actually gotten very close to something that could work. This ingenious invention could potentially save countless lives every year of people in need of an emergency blood transfusion. But even if they successfully create something that is essentially identical to the real thing, vampires cannot survive on it.
Let me repeat that so there is no confusion: Vampires cannot survive on synthetic blood.
For reasons that would take too long to even try to explain in this brief essay, one vital element for survival for all creatures to is the energy generated by their soul. However, when a nightwalker is reborn, he/she can no longer create that energy on his/her own. So, a nightwalker must now acquire that energy we have to get it from an outside source.
Nightwalker’s need another's soul energy, so they get it from the one thing that courses through a human’s entire body (including his/her soul) – a human’s blood. Human blood is laced with the power. Meanwhile, synthetic blood is just a fake. It's never been in the human body. It doesn't have any of the power that a nightwalker seeks to keep him/her alive.
In general, some nightwalkers can exist off the blood of an animal for a short period of time. But it carries with it neither the quality nor the intensity of energy needed to survive and thrive. After a time of subsisting off animal blood, a nightwalker would grow weak and vulnerable. On the other hand, some nightwalkers cannot drink animal blood or the blood of a lycanthrope without becoming extremely ill. Naturi blood is poisonous to all nightwalkers and is lethal upon ingesting.
The so-called craving for blood is more of a survival instinct that keeps nightwalkers alive when our bodies wear down and we are in need of rest and energy. And the red haze of blood lust? That's something else entirely.
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