Let’s do the math…
You can donate three times a year to the red cross (once every 112 days). According to some page, you donate around 10% of your blood volume each time.
That means, for a volume equivalent of 300 people, you’d need to donate 3000 times, which would take around 1000 years.
The vampire is going to need more people, or to keep a person alive 1000 years with vampire magic.
When you’re harvesting the blood iron of your enemies you don’t have time for ethics. A controlled study managed 4 weeks within ethical boundaries, maybe we can cut that in half unethically. So 14 days, 3000 . 14 = 115 years. So when you torture two people, you could manage to do 58 years. Better start early!
Orrrrrr capture the entire family of your foe and then you can name the sword something super cool about ending family lines
The same blood bank? You sure that’s not plasma instead of blood? Plasma re-makes itself way faster than red blood cells.
You’re off on blood production. “Safe” would be once every six to eight weeks for a pint. Plasma can be taken a lot more often. The red blood cells take a while to replenish.
But let’s get real. You’re not concerned about your enemy feeling well. Force them to take iron supplements and take a pint every other week. They’ll likely stay alive that way. Fuck em, right?
Id love to see the math on the amount of iron in a person’s blood, because I find it HIGHLY questionable that there’s enough iron in only 300 people to make a full iron sword. I’m too lazy to do it myself though.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longsword
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body#Elemental_composition_list
The numbers roughly check out. Not sure how much one can extract by just draining the blood though.
You’re both in luck! Someone else linked to an article that breaks down how it could work in reality: https://startrek.website/comment/9430643
All three of you are in luck! Someone made a video attempting to actually forge a sword this way!: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
These are the required elements for making steel:
- Iron
- Carbon
- Manganese
- Chromium
- Phosphorus
- Sulphur
- Nickel
- Molybdenum
- Titanium
- Copper
- Boron
Source: https://www.cliftonsteel.com/education/11elementsfoundinsteel
So, iron is only step 1. Humans are carbon based lifeforms, so I’m guessing that carbon is also sorted, that’s step 2.
There’s plenty of other elements in the human body, like phosphorus and sulphur, but I’m guessing that it’s going to take more than 300 adults.
Source: https://sciencenotes.org/elements-in-the-human-body-and-what-they-do/
Source: https://sciencenotes.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/PeriodicTableHumanBody.png
Someone else did the math, accounting for waste made during forging. https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-gaming/blood-iron-sword-myth-explored/
- Your link says these are elements commonly found in steel, not that they are all required. In fact it says of phosphorus and sulphur that they are generally undesirable.
- We don’t need to make a steel sword, an iron sword could do.
Either way you would definitely need carbon, but as you say that’s pretty easy. I don’t think any of the other elements are absolutely required.
Those are all of them, but that’s for a lot of different types of steels. You don’t have to have all of those metals to make steel. You really just need iron and a tiny bit of carbon. A few of your ingredients help with purity, and the rest are additives for different steel properties you may want. Like a touch of nickel for stainless steel.
I searched for ingredients for making steel. I’m obviously not a metallurgist, nor do I pretend to be one on the internet :)
The meme triggered my interest into discovering just what might be involved.
Clearly I’ve just scratched the surface …
This thread is giving me massive deja vu. I’m pretty sure I read almost this exact thing six months ago.
Beep boop are you a bot?
You only need iron and carbon the rest is already alloyed steel. You can definitely make a good blade out of only iron and carbon, it won’t be stainless, it might be difficult to harden just right, but it will be flexible and hold a keen edge if forged right. The smiths of ole dealt with nastier steels containing all kinds of things making it worse, not better (such as excessive amounts of sulphur and phosphorus) so I’d say they’d manage.
Listen. If they used surplus blood to do this (blood that was expired) and then held a raffle at the end of each year where all blood donors were entered to win a knife or sword made from the expired human blood iron, I bet they’d see blood donations skyrocket.
ok, but humans also regenerate blood, very slowly but it does happen. So theoretically, you could contract your family members to draw blood to be used to make a longsword out of your family’s bloodline. And have it become an heirloom.
imagine, over the centuries of blood donation, the sword slowly grows from a knife, into an absolutely huge dragonslayer behemoth
Is it slowly? I thought you replaced all the blood from a blood donation within a day or two
