It would depend on the setting, I'd think.
In an SF setting, then maybe: it could be the chemical qualities of blood that they need.
In a fantasy setting, then probably not: what they need is life taken from another. Blood is simply the material component of that life force.
Kind of bridging the Sci Fi an Fantasy angles, someone could probably come up with an interesting mechanic about how the blood is grown in a lab
Could be that just straight-up blood cultures grown in a vat don't have the necessary life force, but growing some genetically engineered organism that is just a living blood factory, basically a meat bag of bone marrow, circulatory system, and just enough of a nervous system to keep things going checks enough boxes for it to work.
Sort of tangential to lab-grown blood, but maybe there's a little industry preying on the families of brain-dead patients who insist on keeping them on life support and convincing them to move their loved ones mortal vessels into a blood farm when the medical bills start piling up too high. Or desperate women taking dangerous drugs and getting pregnant in hopes of having an anencephalic baby that they can sell to the vampires to make ends meet.
Maybe there was a plague that causes widespread birth defects and millions of babies are being born without any higher brain functions. The church is having an absolute conniption over this, they won't condone aborting them or taking them off of life support, but the only way many can afford to keep these human-shape meat puppets alive is by giving them over to the vampire blood farms, and they're certainly not about to condone anything having to do with those demon-spawn bloodsuckers either.
Be careful with that reasoning. If vampires only drink blood for the life force connected to it, it's only a short jump to cum vampires.
The movie Lifeforce enters the chat.
Granted it's barely SF, the vampires are barely (see what I did there?) vampires, and it's objectively not a very good movie. But vampires from space sucked the life from people, and it totally rocked.
As a Californian, I was trying to figure out why San Franciscan vampires were able to drink lab blood.
But if vampires don't exist, would they even follow any rules that don't exist either? 👀
Yes, and Morbius (though in Morbius the sybthetic blood loses effectiveness after a while.)
can they drink it?
why yes. I can drink blood too. Not that I would.
does it sustain them?
I would say... yes... depends on freshness. Nothing better than fresh (and warm) from a neck.
would they enjoy it?
call 1-800-ASKVAMPIRE for a trial! toll-free!
In the world of darkness setting, most vampires cannot eat anything other than blood. Drinking coffee would be like drinking liquid ash. Often causing the vampire to puke.
If the synthetic blood is not real blood, it would be like that for them, hence they would physically struggle to drink it.
The question is: can lab grown blood be converted to vitae by a vampire body?
Depends on the setting. It's been a while since I last watched Interview with the Vampire but IIRC there was a scene where Lestat unknowingly drank from a very recently deceased person and it made him sick and weak immediatly, even tho that person was still "warm". I guess the vampires in that setting wouldn't be able to drink anything like lab-grown or even donated blood without severe issues. No heartbeat = not safe.
The vampires in The Witcher however don't need blood to survive - to them it is more like a drug, something that they want to drink and get crazy when they have it, but if they don't get it, they're still perfectly fine. For those it would likely be okay to drink whatever synthetic blood science can create, since it is only for a temporary high anyway.
IRL lore about vampires differs greatly world wide, so answers will be different depending on who you ask. Personally I'd say yes, since I never understood why the victim has to be alive - as long as the blood has all the nutrients the vampire needs, and it hasn't gone bad in some way, it should be fine.
Personally I’d say yes, since I never understood why the victim has to be alive - as long as the blood has all the nutrients the vampire needs, and it hasn’t gone bad in some way, it should be fine.
That works for more sciency vampires, but most settings that include vampires have explicit magic. When you add magic, you can basically apply whatever rules you want for why vampires drink blood. If they're really feeding on the victim's life force or soul or whatever then the synthetic stuff wouldn't cut it, and the blood itself may not even matter.
Exactly, watch the True Blood documentary about how they were able to create synthetic blood for vampires, it also has a very cool soundtrack. It's not as tasty as the real thing but at least you don't need to murder people for their blood anymore.
Lemmy needs an asksciencefiction for this.
I think they would be able to sustain themselves on it, but would constantly complain about how it is soooo different, even though it's chemically identical. But really they'd just be missing the thrill of the hunt and the whole romance side of the lifestyle they've been living for thousands of years.
I think it would be interesting if a story had them using the lab blood like protein bars, something to hold them over but not something desirable.
Somewhat off topic but have you ever thought that people fetishizing vampires haven't realized that they have a colder body temperature which would be uncomfortable intimately?
That would depend on why they drink blood. Personally, I don't think the blood itself can sustain anyone, as in, a pure diet of blood isn't gonna provide you the nutrients and whatever to enable them to survive.
If that's the case, then it might be something inherent to living creatures that give them sustenance, like maybe a bit of your "life force" is taken away or something. If this is true, then lab grown blood wouldn't help them, as there's no life force being created. It's just a bunch of protein and shit.
They did in True Blood. Not really into the supernatural but god damn True Blood was a quality show. Dark af.
Yeah, but it tastes off, like… there’s a very strong taste of chemicals and plastic in modern humans that is sort of covered up by the vague flavour of what the person tends to eat, but it’s just not covered in lab-grown stuff.
It’s still a hell of a lot better than starving or eating a junkie. Quick side note: meth does not work the same on vampires as on humans. Don’t know whether it’s because of the blood mixed with it or some sort of biological difference, but it tends to make a mess.