Emily and I both read and enjoyed World War Z at the beach. Emily enjoyed it enough to ask that The Zombie Survival Guide be included among her birthday loot, and it was probably the spirit of that book that led us to discuss the technical specifics of vampire abatement strategies.
Unfortunately, no consensus could be reached, so it falls to you, internet, to weigh in on the feasibility of killing a vampire by driving one of the following objects through its heart:
- Painted wood (latex/oil/lacquer (e.g. a pool cue))
- Particle board
- Frozen sawdust and water (see also)
- A cone of tightly-wrapped paper
Posit that sufficient force is available to overcome problems related to each material’s sharpness — we are killing these vampires in a laboratory setting, and for the sake of this argument can safely dismiss practical concerns.
Emily felt strongly that the wood’s semantic status was the primary factor at work, leaving her convinced that option one was the only viable method of disposing of the undead. I disagree completely: I think there must be a chemical mechanism at work, which leads me to expect that methods two and three would unquestionably work, and that method four stands a good chance as well. But I have grave concerns about the use of laminated wood, and frankly am surprised that more vampire fiction doesn’t make use of actually-that-stake-was-painted-now-I’m-going-to-bite-you-(SURPRISE!) trope that it makes possible.
What say you, internet? Remember to show your work.
I’m more inclined to agree somewhat with Emily’s assessment. Consider, for instance, that different kinds of wood are specified for the slaying of vampires bred (or “turned”) in different geographic locales. Answers.com provides citations indicating that “Ash was the preferred wood in Russia and the Baltic states,[47] or hawthorn in Serbia,[48] with a record of oak in Silesia.[49].” Each of these woods has its own mythological pedigree, and it’s possible that mystical properties of any one wood could be diluted through extensive processing. If using oak in particleboard, for instance, were to diminish its oak-ness in the (admittedly subjective) eyes of the deities who regard it as sacred, it’s possible that its utility in vampire slaying would be severely curtailed.
If one were to play devil’s advocate (ha ha), one could suggest that a frequent feature of the use of crosses in contemporary vampire mythology specifies that the faith of the wielder may be a crucial variable in the object’s effectiveness (see, for example, the success of Nightcrawler’s makeshift cross succeeding where Wolverine’s would not). Could we similarly argue that the most important factor is whether the staker (or stakee) believe that the item in question is derived from an appropriate species of tree?
This may be up for debate, but I am personally inclined to suggest otherwise. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for instance, it was crucial that the object in question was actually a crucifix, which was distasteful to the Protestant who wore it, and who didn’t even realize its significance. This would suggest to us that the object’s success was contingent upon either some property inherent to the object itself, the belief of the vampire itself, or, arguably, the belief of the person who conferred the object onto its holder. The third of these leaves some room for further study, but it seems probably that every person involved in the manufacturing process of synthetic woods would need to be sufficiently devout to ensure that the final product could efficiently dispatch of the undead.
I can’t comment on the vampire question, as I have always been a zombie man.
If you liked World War Z, you might also like the Monster Island/Nation/Planet series.
http://www.brokentype.com/monster/
re: the last sentence of JasonT’s comment, the N refers to this as “the kosher” stake-making process.