21

Unfortunately, sunlight doesn't appear to have any effect on them, they just start to shine annoyingly. Crucifixes, crosses and holy artifacts are also useless. And I don't think they're allergic to silver.

So, the only usual way of killing a vampire remaining is to stab them with a wooden stake through their heart. Would it work?

Is there another way to kill them?

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  • This begs the question, can they be killed by other vampires? – Dharini Chandrasekaran Mar 8 '12 at 18:19
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    Take away his sparkle. – BBlake Mar 8 '12 at 18:28
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    +over9000 for the motivation of this question alone... I think that everytime I see Robert Pattinson... D: – Gabe Willard Mar 9 '12 at 0:26
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    They burn nicely, and conveniently have lighter fluid for blood. Of course, you have to penetrate diamond-hard skin. I suggest flamethrowers and aiming for eyes. – Jeff May 30 '12 at 19:00
  • Man, they are already dead... – Baby Yoda Oct 27 '13 at 5:19
19

According to Wikipedia:

[Twilight vampires] are immortal and difficult to destroy, only permanently killed when dismembered and then burned, as their body parts continue to move even after being detached.

According to the Twilight Saga wiki:

In the Twilight universe, vampires are not known to be killed by human effort, are unharmed by sunlight, garlic, holy water, silver, any kind of stake, cross, and can enter homes without permission. Also, any kind of human weapon, including bullets, bounces off of them without any pain or harm done. The only known way to kill a vampire is to dismember his or her body and burn the remains before it can reconstruct itself. Thus their weakness is the strength of their kind or something as strong, which cannot be copied by humans, and fire that consumes them.

In the films, vampires are more vulnerable as they can be killed by severing their heads or biting it off their necks. However, fire is still the only known method to destroy them completely.

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    So, "nuke it from orbit - it's the only way to be sure" applies here, too... – John C Mar 8 '12 at 18:22
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    It's not clear that the dismembering is necessary. It's just hard to make them stand still so you can get a good fire going if they're in one piece. But sufficiently sticky napalm might do the job without dismemberment first. – cjm Mar 8 '12 at 19:47
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    They can't be harmed by any weapon...so how in heck are you supposed to dismember them?! Stupid #*(#@$ fine print.... – Mark Beadles Mar 8 '12 at 22:00
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    @MarkBeadles I guess they can't be harmed. Dismembering!=harming if you can piece yourself back together. I guess.... Wait...why am I defending Twilight anyways?? dunks head in a bucket of water. Ah, that's better. – Manishearth Mar 11 '12 at 11:36
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    This makes them sound a bit closer to zombies than vampires to me... – Izkata Mar 11 '12 at 14:33
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From the Twilight novel, the only way to be sure is to rip the vampire apart, and then burn the pieces. The vampires seem to have known this about themselves since time immemorial. The Quileute werewolves discovered it independently, when one of the wolves brought back pieces of a vampire who had been killing Makah women in a neighboring village. The pieces were still moving and tried to reassemble themselves, until the Quileutes scattered and burned them.

Other than that, there is no known way to really kill a vampire in the Twilight universe. Their skin is hard enough that only two things are known to pierce it; vampire teeth and werewolf teeth. So, no wooden stakes through the heart, no silver bullets, etc etc. They don't ever have to breathe, so drowning, strangling, etc don't work, and crosses, holy water, even sunlight don't affect them in the slightest. So, at least in the books, only a werewolf or a vampire could kill a vampire.

However, Aro, in the last book Breaking Dawn, says that human technology has progressed to the point where humans can actually pose a danger to vampires and even kill them. I can only assume this is a reference to explosives, whether conventional or nuclear. Shoot a vampire with a rocket launcher and you'd be approaching the kind of force a vampire themself would be able to exert. Dropping a thermonuke onto Volterra would probably mean no more Volturi. Obviously speed would still be an issue, but vampires, though fast, seem to still be subsonic, so a guided missile could probably track and intercept them, and if you managed to catch a vampire unaware you have a chance at detonating a weapon like this before they could get out of its range.

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  • Of course as fast as a vampire is, who would be able to successfully guide the missile and hit a vampire? – Xantec Mar 9 '12 at 6:49
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    Actually, I think that Aro was referring to stuff as simple as flares and accelerants. Napalm, being sticky, would really give a vampire problems. – Donald.McLean Jul 2 '14 at 13:35
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Aro burns Irina in Breaking Dawn and she was not dismembered! Fire seems to be the only way to destroy them. I think dismemberment just makes it much easier to do because you don't have a vampire fighting you every step of the way. If you remember the bit about the Quileutes not being REAL werewolves, then I might also think that "children of the moon" in Caius's words would be able to also break them, and therefore burn them more easily.

Edward says starving themselves doesn't work, but he also says they are stronger after they feed and it gets harder to resist the longer they go. What if they had no food for a substantially long time (Human extinction)? If the amount of sustenance in their system runs parallel to their strength, I would assume that for a long period of starvation, death could also be possible. Or a deathless limbo which can be recovered from if someone forced it down their mouths....

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  • Wrong; Caius, not Aro, burned Irina, and she was indeed dismembered beforehand by members of the Volturi guard. It just happens so fast that all you see is the aftermath; a blazing pyre that Caius's handheld flamethrower is pouring fire onto. – KeithS Mar 26 '12 at 15:50
  • Wikia says that dismemberment is needed not to kill; but to prevent the escape from the fire. – DVK-on-Ahch-To Apr 22 '14 at 2:14
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The Way to kill a Twilight vampire is to tear it apart and burn the peices. This method however seems to be particularly difficult and should not be attempted by a human. The only thing strong enough to break vampire skin is another vampire or the teeth of a Spirit warrior wolf such as Jacob Black and the quileute tribe pack.

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  • I'm unfamiliar with the source material. Is there a canon example of this in the books that you can cite? – phantom42 Jun 21 '13 at 13:29
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Nuclear weapons probably would do the trick: large blast radius, extreme overpressure near ground zero (rips them apart), temperature comparable to that at the core of the sun (burn them). So technically we still stand a chance.

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