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Public Health Notice, Chicago 1908

London's Battersea Station, the end of the line for thousands of vampires

The vampire population boom forced world leaders to take drastic measures to try and slow the spread of the plague. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt ordered a curfew in every city and town in the country. At dusk across the land, curfew sirens rang out as children ran in from their play and cities fell dark. The curfew was economically devastating for restaurants, theaters, bars and nightclubs, and led to a mini-Depression. President Roosevelt also authorized an emergency vampire relief fund, with most of the money going to the FVZA to hire more people and upgrade their equipment. In addition, every branch of the Armed Forces was called into service to help the Agency.

Large cities were hardest hit by the vampire explosion. Early each morning in London, boatmen would make their way west along the fog-shrouded Thames, stopping at various wharfs to pick up vampires that had been destroyed the night before. The sight of a withered old boatman slipping silently through the fog, his boat heaped with vampire corpses, was one of the indelible impressions of the day. Eventually, the vampire corpses would be brought to the Battersea power station for incineration. At its peak, Battersea station was burning more than 100 vampires a day.

NY Times Headline, 1905

Other cities took more dramatic steps to combat the rise in vampirism. In Bombay, India, the city's old quarter, with its narrow streets and numerous homeless people, had become a a breeding ground for vampires. When extermination efforts by British troops did little to stem the problem, the Viceroy ordered the area burned to the ground. Thousands were displaced, and a precious historical neighborhood was gone forever. Not surprisingly, vampire fighting became a valued trade: mercenary vampire fighters roamed the globe, demanding top fees for their services.

FVZA Agents take down a "curfew-buster"

While vampires took thousands of victims between 1900 and 1910, their psychological toll on the public may have been even worse. Innocent people were gunned down as panic and paranoia reigned. Some enterprising Americans tried to leaven the stress by opening illegal bars and clubs known as "Curfew-Busters." The locations of these establishments changed often to keep away from the prying eyes of the FVZA.

In general, attempts to skirt the law were the exception and not the rule. Most people in the U.S. honored the curfew, forcing blood-starved vampires to become more brazen, and in the process, more vulnerable. After reaching a peak in 1905, the vampire population stabilized somewhat, before growing again through the Great Depression and the war, until science trotted out its greatest weapon: the vampire vaccine.