Hello Everyone,
I was just wondering if snakes were a huge problem for soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam. I’m sure there were plenty of venomous snakes in the area. Did we lose soldiers due to snake bites? Did medics carry anti-venom?
- Studies indicated only 25-50 snakebite incidents occurred annually in US forces. Of these, only a few necessitated intensive therapy…
…The most common venomous bite was from the arboreal white-lipped bamboo viper, but such a bite was never lethal for an American soldier (Berlinger and Flowers 1973) (fig. 69).*
From here. From the reference above apparently fear of snakebite was pronounced, but all out of proportion to its actual occurrence or lethality. Quoting some more:
The authors found, upon interviewing troops in Vietnam, that the majority believed that poisonous snakes were to be found in abundance there and that few persons survived a bite. Soldiers from rattlesnake infested areas in the United States harbored little fear of these reptiles but were deathly afraid of the “bamboo vipers” of Vietnam. In actuality, the “bamboo viper” is a small snake which seldom injects sufficient venom to inflict a serious bite, whereas rattlesnakes are capable of producing death or permanent injury in victims. Almost all of the persons questioned had heard of the “cigarette snakes” (when you are bitten you only have time for one cigarette); or the “two-step snake” (no explanation necessary), but were not cognizant that only one snakebite death had occurred in US forces since United States involvement there. *
*As of 1973 when the article with that quote was released.
That’s interesting, because I had always heard tales of the deadly “two step” snakes. Interesting that there was no such thing!
I should have guessed - on TV shows when I was a kid, the western US was full of deadly creatures. Everyone “knew” scorpions, black widow spiders, tarantulas and rattle snakes were all instant death machines. (It’s so pathetic to see Bond “menaced” by a tarantula in Dr No. And on top of that, they used photo tricks - Connery wasn’t even in the scene with the spider.)
How did these creatures ever get that reputation? Scorpion stings are not pleasant, a black widow bite can make you so sick that you hope for death, but generally you won’t die from either. And tarantulas were never fatal. Rattlesnakes - yeah they can be fatal. One out of four.
Nah, Vietnam may be a buggy, snake-infested hellhole, but it’s no Australia.
They got the reputation because people died from them. People have varying levels of sensitivity to venom and there were no genuinely effective treatments until relatively recently. In addition, some number of bite/sting victims were allergic and died due to anaphylaxis, for which there also was no effective treatment until recently. Not to mention that although “only” one out of four people may die from a rattlesnake bite (in this age of modern medicine) that statistic ignores the number of bite victims that lose digits or whole limbs to tissue damage. Check out some brown recluse bites for additional hilarity. Pre-antibiotics, the open sore from such bites was, alone, an invitation to death by sepsis.
People had good reason to develop fear of venomous creatures.
:eek: :eek: I’ll take my chances with the snakes.
There has NEVER been a recorded death from a tarantula. Never.
Black widow and scorpion bites are rarely fatal in healthy adults. They hurt like hell. In certain cases, yes, bites and stings can be fatal.
But, so can getting trampled by a ornery cow, or kicked by a horse. But horses and cows are not considered lethal killing machines of the west like scorpions and black widows.
NEVER get out of the boat! Absolutely goddamn right!
What answer are you looking for? People are teh stoopud? People learned to fear them because of painful, disfiguring, not infrequently lethal bites. Whether you consider their fears valid is a separate issue and not one that is arguable one way or the other.
Emphasis added. That mostly hold true in the United States were there is only one medically significant scorpion and that only barely makes it over the border - mostly it is an issue in Arizona. But elsewhere ( like the Pacific coast of Mexico ) there is a slightly more diverse crew of nasty actors. Generally speaking very, very few scorpion species are dangerous ( less than 0.025% ), but some of the ones that are can pack a real wallop.
Props to Australia - they have none of those deadly species :D.
ARBOREAL? You mean like, I’d be walking along and poisonous snakes would drop down onto me out of the trees? I totally understand the need for intensive therapy. :eek:
Also: Snakes have lips?
The better to kiss you with, my dear. o_O
You will always have much longer to live than two steps, but there are several species of snakes in the world whose bites are close to 100% fatal without antivenin.
IIRC the only one of these native to Asia is the Krait (there are other species whose untreated bites kill well over half the victims). Here is an account of the death from a Krait bite of a world-renowned herpetologist who was careless. He succumbed in about 28 hours:
It is gathered that tigers in Vietnam are nowadays in a bad way, compared with in the days of the war.
It would appear from the above, that the Indochinese variety of the tiger is highly endangered: doing – very relatively – better in Thailand and Myanmar, than in the three countries of Indochina proper, where it is teetering on the edge of extinction. While one would have to be a very extreme wildlife enthusiast, to welcome being killed and eaten by a tiger in the course of going about one’s business: I cannot but feel sad about the current situation.
FWIW, the King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah)'s range includes Vietnam. Weirdly, if you’d asked me before I looked it up, I’d have thought that Russell’s Viper would’ve been the big killer and that the King Cobra, like the Spectacled Cobra, (Naja naja) would’ve only been found in India and Sri Lanka. Russell’s isn’t native to Vietnam, though the wiki states that it’s being found there more and more often. As a popular way to avoid American reconnaissance was to dig bunkers underground, I wonder just how bad a problem snakes were for the NVA and VC? Similarly, it’d be interesting to read accounts from the Communist side about animal encounters along the Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia border region.
Here’s another site with aceplace57’s account, this time with pictures of the critter. The Korean tiger is supposedly making a comeback within their DMZ.
Beautiful animals, even the snakes.
Only when they flew.
14 minutes from question to answer. Well done, sir, even if you are one of the worst conquerors in history. 
Tangentially related, there was an interesting Cracked article recently about Vietnam, from the point-of-view of an enemy combatant.
Moderator Note
Typo in title fixed.
If only he’d have been Quickinsky.