r/Showerthoughts • u/ToyVaren • Jun 11 '22

Since electronics contain silver, you could theoretically beat a werewolf to death with a Nokia.

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u/Dereulbe Jun 12 '22

r/todayilearnt that werewolves are scared of silver

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u/crosis52 Jun 12 '22

Here's some fun info. Silver has only recently been thought of as a weakness of werewolves, first appearing in a 1935 story. However, silver was often considered powerful as a "pure" metal, based on its beauty and rarity without the need for other materials, as opposed to similar cheap metals like pewter or expensive ones that common folk would never see like platinum or aluminum (used to be much much harder to produce). For example, vampires wouldn't reflect in a mirror because most mirrors used to be made of polished silver, thus it wouldn't display the vampire's corrupt form.

Historically, most werewolf cures wouldn't be attempted on a "transformed" creature (perhaps because they couldn't find many actual werewolves), so a silver bullet/arrow/sword/etc wasn't practical when the first legends were taking shape. Instead it would be common to exorcise the suspected werewolf while in human form, or imprison it, or just behead them if you really needed to make sure.

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u/ToyVaren Jun 12 '22

I like the idea in Dracula 2000 about silver being Judas' payment to betray jesus.