Gen Con supplied over 3,200 life-saving health potions

You might have missed it in the rush to get to the exhibit hall, but in between the Hoosier and Crossroads Concourse a small table was set up to intake participants for the blood drive at Gen Con.  If you signed up to donate blood, you were directed to the second floor of Lucas Oil Stadium, where the hosts—the Versiti Blood Center of Indiana and The Heinlein Society—set up private booths. By chance, the rascals caught an Uber driven by Cheynnye, a paramedic who had spent the weekend at Gen Con taking people’s blood and claimed they were filling up coolers “faster than the drivers could take them away.” According to anecdotal evidence online, Gen Con was most likely a superspreader event for COVID-19, but the donors in attendance are likely to save thousands of lives. Silver linings. 

There have been numerous reports of Gen Con’s record-breaking attendance in 2024, but did you know that nearly 1,100 people gave blood over the course of the convention? With each person donating a unit of blood (divided into red cells, platelets, and plasma), the donations collected at Gen Con could save almost 3,200 lives over the next month, all over the midwest.