“Deadliest Warrior” — S03E10 — Vampires vs. Zombies
Deadliest Warrior — Season 03, Episode 10 — Vampires versus Zombies
For the season three series finale, Deadliest Warrior looks to Hollywood and legendary horror monsters to simulate a battle between vampires and zombies, using science and combat tactics to determine which one is the deadliest creature.
Originating from somewhere in eastern Europe, the vampire folklore skyrocketed in popularity after the publication of Bram Stoker’s 1897 thriller, Dracula. Vampires are creatures of the night. Able to transform themselves into bats and thought to be intelligent and with six to ten times the strength of an ordinary human, vampires are creatures feared throughout the night. And it’s during the night when they feed on human blood. Using large fangs and razor sharp claws, vampires are considered to be apex predators. But it’s only during the night when they’re dangerous. Sunlight can kill a vampire just as easily as a wooden stake pounded through its heart or chopping off its head.
In the world of Hollywood, zombies are the walking dead. This is not to be confused with the West African and Haitian Vodun (a.k.a. voodoo) religion where a bokor (a.k.a. sorcerer) injects something similar to a psychoactive drug into a living person and essentially takes control of his or her body, whether that person is still alive or recently deceased. The Hollywood zombies are recently deceased, often slow moving creatures. Appearing stupid and unintelligent, these creatures will use each muscle and every ounce of power to reach its target — living people. A bite from a zombie or transfer of bodily fluids will transfer the zombie virus, slowly killing that person and making him or her into a fellow zombie. Day or night, rain or shine, zombies will roam towns and the countryside in hordes until they stumble upon their next meal and pass along the zombie virus. A zombie can lose its arms and legs and still keep wiggling itself towards its meal. A zombie will not stop until its brain is destroyed. It cannot be frightened. It cannot be intimidated. It cannot feel any pain.
One-on-one, a vampire would destroy a zombie. Vampires are fast, agile, incredibly strong, and can think on their feet. But when faced with a zombie horde or even an apocalypse, can vampires survive against an army of the undead?
VERSUS 
WEAPONS: Not wielding any weapons like sticks, knives or guns, both vampires and zombies use their deadly mouths and incredibly strong hands to attack and kill their victims. Neither vampires or zombies wear any sort of armor.
The format of this episode of Deadliest Warrior is different. It’s quickly pointed out that the main fight will not be an even one-on-one or five-on-five battle as demonstrated in the previous episodes this season. What the researchers need to determine is the correct ratio of zombies to vampires to try to determine what is believed to be a fair fight between the two horror legends. That is, just how large of a zombie horde a single vampire can successfully fight.
For this episode of Deadliest Warrior, the vampires are similar to those found in the movie 30 Days of Night, and the zombies are similar to ones seen in Night of the Living Dead.
VAMPIRE CLAWS
Vampires are thought to have around six times the strength of a normal human. To test a vampire’s strength, a world champion board breaker uses special claw hands (think of Freddy Krueger’s glove, but smaller) to attack twelve zombie targets representing a much larger horde of 72 zombies. The objective is to see how many zombies he can kill before any of them touch him. Each zombie starts a distance of 20-30 feet away, and at random speeds and intervals they will move towards him.
As we saw in the demonstration, the man hacked and slashed nine zombies before the last three closed the distance and reached him. Multiply nine by six (vampires are believed to be six times stronger and faster than humans), and it’s determined that a single vampire could kill about 54 zombies before being bitten or killed. Average 54 and 72 and you’ll get 63 ( (54 + 72) /2 = 63), the ratio (63:1) of zombies to vampires to be used in the final battle.
ZOMBIE BITE
Capable of biting with the full force of the jaw bone and all associated muscles, the bite is the zombie’s primary weapon. Biting is used to both feed upon human flesh and further spread the zombie virus, its sole purpose as a zombie.
When you disregard pain felt by a living person and any thoughts of fear or even sympathy, a zombie’s true bite force is believed to be similar to that of a rottweiler dog. Joey, the rottweiler, is tested and determined to have a bite force of 255 pounds of pressure.
A set of pneumatic teeth biting at a force of 255 pounds are tested against a model of a vampire’s head and neck. This test is not as to whether or not a zombie can bite into a vampire, but rather how quickly a vampire will lose enough blood to become incapacitated and become the next zombie victim. As we saw in the rather bloody demonstration, the teeth bit into the neck several times, and it took 02:22 for the vampire to lose enough blood to die.
How many zombies can a weakening vampire kill in those two minutes of being bitten in the worst possible location?
VAMPIRE BITE
Using a massive set of razor sharp, serrated teeth, along with a disarticulated jaw bone capable of opening extra wide, the vampire is an extremely powerful biting machine. It’s through this bite that the vampire kills and also feeds upon its prey.
A vampire’s bite force is thought to be comparable to that of an alligator. In this test, Ripper, the alligator, bit a device at the end of a pole, and he was measured to have a bite force of 1,723 pounds of pressure. The pneumatic teeth are adjusted for vampire’s teeth, complete with a much larger bite size and strength, and this is tested against a zombie ballistic gel torso to see if a vampire can bite into a destroy a zombie’s brain. As we saw, it took two bites and five seconds for the vampire teeth to break through the zombie’s skull and attack the brain.
If a vampire bites into the brain and gets the zombie blood in its mouth, will that vampire contract the zombie disease?
ZOMBIE HANDS
Immune to pain and capable of gripping, breaking bones and tearing apart human flesh, the zombie’s decaying hands are unrelenting weapons. They will squeeze and tear open the human body with up to three times the strength of a normal human.
Testing a zombie’s hands was a different experience. This test involved using three strong men, blindfolding them, and seeing how long it would take for them to rip open a ballistic gel torso and remove the heart. As we saw, the blood sprayed and bones cracked and crunched as the men blindly tore their way through the dummy. It took them 58 seconds to crack open the chest and remove the heart of the stationary target.
Remember that this test was three “zombies” against a stationary target. Obviously, a vampire would still be struggling and fighting back as long as possible, and another vampire can appear and rescue his fallen friend. And of course, there would probably be many more than three zombies attacking a vampire. A zombie horde will swam and keep biting and tearing a vampire until it’s dead.
VAMPIRE CLAWS – PART 2
A vampire’s claws are razor sharp, as strong as steel, and capable of slashing and shredding with superhuman strength.
This second test of the vampire’s claws was necessary to test the actual strength of the vampire’s claws and arm. A strongman struck a target with a measured 1,470 pounds of pressure. Multiplying that strike force by six, and a vampire has an estimated strike force of around 8,820 pounds of pressure.
A pneumatic vampire arm was then calibrated to 8,820 pounds of pressure and tested against a zombie gel torso. As we saw, it took just over one second for the vampire’s claw to break open and dig into the zombie’s brain, killing the creature nearly instantly.
Of course, breaking open the skull and spilling zombie blood spreads the virus to anything that comes in contact with that blood. A vampire may kill a single zombie just like that, but spilling its blood and helping to re-transmit the disease will just keep “growing” more zombies and continuing to spread the virus. In a battle against zombies, is there really a winner in the end?
OVERALL WINNER — VAMPIRE (sort of)
FINAL THOUGHTS
The final fight began with three vampires versus one hundred and eighty-nine zombies. While the battle started at night, at one point a vampire noticed that the sun was beginning to rise, forcing him to remain in the industrial warehouse and continue fighting the zombies. The vampires killed all of the zombies, but at the very end of the episode, we saw that the last vampire was bitten in the hand and already undergoing the zombie transformation.
Out of the five thousand simulated battles of zombie hordes against vampires, the vampires won 2,541 times, a mere 50.8% of the time.
Here we had a battle of intelligence and strength versus raw numbers.
The bottom line here is that if you have the numbers, in the end you will win the battle. You can wear down your enemy with wave after wave after wave of attacks, losing a significant number of your own troops, and in battle, the defender will ultimately tire or run out of ammunition if unable to escape. In this scenario the zombies had the numbers and the vampires were trapped in the warehouse because of the rising sun.
In this final battle, the zombies were actually the ultimate winners because their virus, the very reason that they exist and attack living humans, was successfully transferred to the last surviving vampire. It’s debatable if the vampire’s immune system can fight off such an infection, but the bottom line is that it was passed and we saw signs of the vampire undergoing a zombie transformation.
Personally, I didn’t care for this style of vampire. I’m still a fan of the classic version where vampires charmed women, walked around in capes, and could transform themselves into bats and wolves. But the zombies here looked great! Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaains!
This episode of Deadliest Warrior was much better than originally expected. Perhaps future seasons will have more of these Hollywood match-ups as long as it doesn’t get too corny. It’s just too bad that this episode didn’t premier closer to Halloween. It’s not even the end of September yet and we’re already discussing zombies battling vampires.