Why can't Angel do CPR?

J. Ruby

J. Ruby

paralyzed with not caring
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I've been watching Buffy for about five and a half years (not very long in the grand scheme, I know), but I didn't start discussing it online until recently, so please forgive me if I'm beating the proverbial dead horse.

My question is simple. Why can't Angel do CPR? I searched for the words "angel" and "cpr" together here on the BB and only came up with one thread that fit both criteria. I don't really understand what the person was saying -- I'm not sure they do either.

Jill Valentine said:
And for the record, they can and do breathe (which is how they speak and smoke) out of habit, more than anything I think, but I think Giles mentioned at some stage that it spoils the air. (Which is why Angel can't do CPR)
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Does anyone know what she's talking about as far as what Giles supposedly mentioned about it spoiling the air?

The way I see it, if a vamp can smoke, and talk, and otherwise perform the act of breathing, meaning the diaphragm and lungs function on some basic level, then why wouldn't Angel be able to perform CPR? Isn't it just sucking in air from the atmosphere and then releasing it into someone else? Wouldn't Angel's "breath" in fact be even more pure than a living person's breath, since living people convert oxygen into carbon dioxide before it is exhaled? Or is this Jill person correct, and Giles indeed did explain that a vamp's breath is somehow spoiled? I guess it makes sense in some way -- if living people convert oxygen into CO2 when it passes through the blood, then maybe a vamp converts oxygen into something evil when it passes through its blood. That is, assuming oxygen is actually prosessed that way in vamps, which I assume it is not.

I'm sorry my thoughts aren't more organized. I often think with my fingers.
 
i think it has something to do with the fact that a vampire is essentially a reanimated corpse...the body's dead. so when they take in air to breathe or smoke, they corrupt it some how, turn it sour, i guess. so they can't use that breath to help a living human being breathe again.
 
Maybe they don't breathe oxygen? Maybe, vampires breathe carbon dioxide, and so they rely on global warming?!

What... it's a theory. 🙁
 
Well they don't breathe at all - he makes mention to Xander that he has no breathe right, and let's recall he hung out at the bottom of the Ocean for three months... he doesn't need to breathe.
 
actually, they dont have need for air whatsoever. It isn't essential for them to breathe, so they can't breathe. I believe angel states something similar to that effect somewhere in the buffy/angel verse.
course i could be wrong
 
I understand that vampires have no need for breathing. However, they are obviously capable of the act of breathing -- sucking the air in and pushing it back out -- because they can talk, smoke, etc. So why couldn't Angel have just taken in a lung full of air and then pushed it into Buffy, like Spike taking a puff of a cig and exhaling the smoke? The only reason I can think of is that there's something wrong with the air after it has been inside a vampire's lungs, like it's spoiled as mentioned above. But does anyone know of any time that this is stated?
 
Maybe they don't breathe in the oxygen, they just breathe in everything itself, since oxygen is what makes your heart beat, so they obviously don't have any.

So, vampires probably have the oxygen filtered out.
 
JCC said:
Maybe they don't breathe in the oxygen, they just breathe in everything itself, since oxygen is what makes your heart beat, so they obviously don't have any.

So, vampires probably have the oxygen filtered out.
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That's along the lines of what I was thinking. They CAN smoke & breathe if they want to but they don't HAVE to but if they want to "breathe", I think it is just empty breathing if that's what you wanna call it. Breathing but no oxygen, no life.
 
First of all, their bodies cannot be dead and rotting. If they were, they would continue to rot and eventually be zombies, essentially. So when they are vampires they're bodies HAVE to be alive, personally I think in the Buffyverse they're bodies are just sort of immortal-ized by the demons that take them over. I mean, they bleed, which means their blood circulates, and they can be poisoned.

We see the vampires on the show breathing all the time. In fact, they couldn't talk without breathing, let alone smoke. And if they breathe in, they're going to breathe in oxygen along with everything else, and since they're body presumably doesn't need it, it makes no sense as to why they couldn't perform CPR.

Personally I think it's a writer's mistake, one that comes from them not properly thinking out what a vampire truly is in their world.
 
Randy Giles said:
I mean, they bleed, which means their blood circulates, and they can be poisoned.
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Yes, vampires do bleed as if their blood flows in the same way as a mortal human's. And yet, there are plenty of references to how a vampire's heart doesn't beat.

We see the vampires on the show breathing all the time. In fact, they couldn't talk without breathing, let alone smoke. And if they breathe in, they're going to breathe in oxygen along with everything else, and since they're body presumably doesn't need it, it makes no sense as to why they couldn't perform CPR.
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Yeah, the question of whether vampires breathe, and the question of whether their hearts beat, are both handled inconsistently. I think most of us would agree with your conclusion that

Personally I think it's a writer's mistake, one that comes from them not properly thinking out what a vampire truly is in their world.
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I think this boils down to what it means to be alive. A vampire is a human that has died and had it's soul replaced by a demonic essence. The body continues to exist but is no longer alive in the true sense. It no longer ages or requires oxygen, food or water in the way it once did to survive. When harmed a vampire's body can heal more easily and withstand a much greater amount of damage than it could when it was in it's human form.

That suggests that all the outward signs of "life" that a vampire exhibits are there purely for cosmetic reasons. As a form of disguise or cover to prevent it's prey from working out too quickly that they are looking at a dead being. To do that the vampire body would need to maintain certain bodily functions artificially, without the use of the original organs that performed the given functions. The blood has to flow without a heart beating and air has to enter and leave the body without the use of the lungs, at least in the human sense.

Basically, nothing about a vampire's physical appearance is happening the way it did when it was human. There is air being drawn into the vampire form but it is not being processed in the same way that it was when the body was still alive. Because of that it is a safe bet that a vampire's "breathe" would not be much use when trying to bring a human back to life by way of CPR. Whatever process is causing the illusion of breathe in the vampire will likely be totally incompatible with the needs of a human.
 
Kana
Kana
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Ojuice5001 said:
Yes, vampires do bleed as if their blood flows in the same way as a mortal human's. And yet, there are plenty of references to how a vampire's heart doesn't beat.


I know a lot of you don't like to hear about the S T universe, but a long time ago, Dr McCoy explained that, along with other things, Vulcans don't have a centralized circulatory system, but rather their blood circulates due to a sort of rhythmic rippling of the various blood vessels. Possibly vampires accomplish their blood circulation in a similar way, and the oxygen is completely absorbed from each and every breath that they take, thus rendering whatever they exhale not only useless, but potentially toxic to humans.

I've always sort of doubted the whole "don't breathe" thing with vampires anyhow. They may not NEED to breathe, but breathing is an involuntary reflex, just like blinking (that's why you can't commit suicide by simply holding your breath until you suffocate). How many times have we seen various vampires sigh, breathe normally, and even pant after strenuous activity? Their demon physiology may not require breathing, but their bodies still possess the breathing reflex.
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R
Randy Giles
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Well, so long as he is able to push air into her lungs things should be fine. It's an attempts to get the lungs working again, along with the heart. My fanwank on it is that Angel simply didn't know how, and said the breath thing to cover for that fact.
 
I have never, ever heard anything about vampires "breathing" anything toxic or harmful to humans. If that were the case, anyone who kissed or got too close to a vampire when they were smoking would be toast.

Considering that this happened right around Season 1 which didn't really set the world on fire to begin with, I think it's safe to say that this is nothing more than an inconsistency that occured as Joss and the rest of the writers were trying to iron out exactly how this whole vampire thing worked. After all, Prophecy Girl predates School Hard, which, if I remember correctly, is what got people wondering about all of this in the first place.
 
Basically, the only breath that a vamp has is used for speaking, so there's rarely any left over to be given to someone else. Also, (pure speculation) maybe they breathe out cursed air?
 
I know this isn't exactly going to end speculation, but I remember Angel's exact words when Xander wanted him to revive Buffy. Angel told Xander he'd have to do it because, "I have no breath". I'm 90% certain they were Angel's exact words.

That may help for further explanation. Unfortunately, i think this is just one of those times that there is no real explanation. Although I'm all for formulating something credible. 🙂
 
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