# Were snakes a big problem for soldiers in Vietnam?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 31, 2015, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424 "2015-03-31T16:10:33Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2015, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/21 "2015-04-01T05:05:49Z")
Kraits. I saw one. It scared the crap out of me. Which was good timing, considering what I was doing at the time. And those clowns used to laugh at me when I took out a whetstone to put an edge on my entrenching tool!
well, sure, first I took it to a grinding wheel, what’s your point?
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### Author:  [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2015, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/22 "2015-04-01T05:45:49Z")
> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> Nah, Vietnam may be a buggy, snake-infested hellhole, but it’s no Australia.
Hey, even Australia is no _Australia_, in that sense.
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### Author:  [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2015, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/23 "2015-04-01T05:56:05Z")
> [@Princhester](#):
>
> Hey, even Australia is no _Australia_, in that sense.
Shhh!! Don’t spoil the fun.
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### Author:  [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2015, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/24 "2015-04-01T14:18:58Z")
> [@Kron](#):
>
> Tangentially related, there was an interesting [Cracked article](http://www.cracked.com/article_22206_8-facts-about-vietnam-war-i-learned-as-viet-cong.html) recently about Vietnam, from the point-of-view of an enemy combatant.
Yes, that article was very informative. Snakes were a bigger problem for the Vietnamese soldiers than American, so the answer to the OP is ‘Yes’.
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### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2015, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/25 "2015-04-01T15:07:50Z")
> [@Scumpup](#):
>
> What answer are you looking for? People are teh stoopud? People learned to fear them because of painful, disfiguring, not infrequently lethal bites.
Yep. Anyone that thinks people are weird or irrational for fearing, say, spider bites, go ahead and google _spider bite necrosis_.
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2015, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/26 "2015-04-01T16:57:42Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#):
>
> Black widow and scorpion bites are rarely fatal **in healthy adults.**
[emphasis added–mbh]
They can be dangerous to small children. You teach your kids to be cautious, and they keep the habit after they are grown.
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### Author:  [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/27 "2015-04-01T18:32:59Z")
With the conversation having gone fairly far and wide – not solely about snakes, but also dealing with other Vietnamese fauna which could make life “interesting” in more than one sense: I’m emboldened to get into realms in which I have a certain amount of interest, namely “cryptozoological” stuff.
Have seen a certain amount on the Net, from people with an interest in this topic, involving reports from Vietnam war participants of encounters with primates of kinds not known to mainstream science, as members of the fauna of that part of the world. These seemed to come in two varieties: more frequently encountered at least by US forces, were creatures which the Americans usually called “rock apes” – basically chimpanzee- or orang-utan-sized (per orthodox zoology, there are no orang-utans in Indo-China: gibbons are “the max” there, in that line) – well, apes. Less often met with, was a Yeti- or Bigfoot-like bipedal “hairy giant”, reckoned an average of about 7 feet tall, which the Vietnamese called _nguoi rung_ – reported encountered by the “opposition”, at least as often as by the US forces. Encounters were usually fleeting: both varieties could be violent, or mischievous – but for the most part, the beasties seemed just to want to avoid humans / get out of their way. (I notice, no mention of any of these creatures, by the _Cracked_ interviewee – it seems to have been tigers, with which he had a big problem.)
It is generally gathered from those who are interested in this scene: that (in these folks’ view) while these primates were around during the war, enough to attract the attention of people on both sides – there seem to have been no reports of encounters in Vietnam with either kind, in the past three decades or more. People can make of all this, what they will: including the opinion held by very many, that “crypto-creatures” are basically nonsense and non-existent, and accounts of encounters with them can be ascribed to various causes, not including actually meeting with an uncatalogued flesh-and-blood species.
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### Author:  [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2015, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/28 "2015-04-03T12:40:12Z")
Cryptozoological stuff is usually, “whatever”, a sure-fire thread-killer; but I’ve just noticed the date of my above post – had I realised at the time, I’d have postponed making it till the following day. It wasn’t meant as an April-Fool prank: those who take these things seriously, are seriously interested in this Vietnam-war-originating material. I have an open-ish mind about things cryptozoological: reckon that most of such – quite possibly all – is bunk, but don’t completely reject all of it out of hand. Like many sceptics about these matters, I’d be delighted if the creatures concerned, _were_ proved to exist.
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### Author:  [@get\_lives](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/get_lives)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2015, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/29 "2015-04-03T13:58:24Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#):
>
> Cryptozoological stuff is usually, “whatever”, a sure-fire thread-killer; but I’ve just noticed the date of my above post – had I realised at the time, I’d have postponed making it till the following day. It wasn’t meant as an April-Fool prank: those who take these things seriously, are seriously interested in this Vietnam-war-originating material. I have an open-ish mind about things cryptozoological: reckon that most of such – quite possibly all – is bunk, but don’t completely reject all of it out of hand. Like many sceptics about these matters, I’d be delighted if the creatures concerned, _were_ proved to exist.
No fossil record usually means it doesn’t exist. Like with Bigfoot–how in the heck was a giant non-tool-using primate supposed to get across the Bering Land Bridge to the Americas? You need tools to survive in the Arctic, or the ability to swim and catch fish.
My guess is that most stories of Bigfoot, faery folk, the little people, etc. is either a result of cultural remembrances of great apes or of Neanderthals.
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### Author:  [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/30 "2015-04-03T16:34:51Z")
I’m not an impassioned “Bigfoot believer” – just intrigued by this stuff, and prone to rather idly thinking, “what if…”. Please take my responses as semi-humorous. (Besides, the scenario has them having been in Asia already, so as to cross into North America.)
> [@get\_lives](#):
>
> No fossil record usually means it doesn’t exist. Like with Bigfoot–how in the heck was a giant non-tool-using primate supposed to get across the Bering Land Bridge to the Americas? You need tools to survive in the Arctic, or the ability to swim and catch fish.
Lack of fossil record: as you say, “usually” – but not invariable conclusive proof.
The envisaged creatures supposedly have a nice thick warm coat of hair; and per reports cited by some Bigfooters, they have been observed swimming, and catching fish (e.g. vying with grizzly bears and homo sapiens sapiens at the salmon run on Pacific North-West / British Columbia rivers).
> [@](#):
>
> My guess is that most stories of Bigfoot, faery folk, the little people, etc. is either a result of cultural remembrances of great apes or of Neanderthals.
Re “most” stories, as you say: likely enough. There’s sufficient material told of / recorded, to cause me to “keep the door a little bit ajar”, re possibility of there being more than that, going on on this scene.
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### Author:  [@SandyHook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SandyHook)
#### Post date: [April 5, 2015, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/31 "2015-04-05T05:14:33Z")
I was in the Marines in Vietnam for a year and spent a very large part of it just walking around. About half in rice paddy country and half in the mountains (well, pretty good size hills, but we called them mountains). I remember seeing one snake and never heard of anyone being bitten.
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### Author:  [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2015, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/32 "2015-04-08T17:20:28Z")
I finally got a chance to ask my dad about snakes in Vietnam. It came up because he was talking about clearing a landing for a helicopter (he was in the First Cav) using C4, and how when it blew the snakes would rain down along with all the vegitation.
I asked if snakes were a “problem” and he said no not really but they were the animals he saw most, after bugs. He related a tale of being on break and seeing a bamboo viper descend down a tree above a guy leaning against said tree. He told the guy to stay still and grabbed another guy’s machette (dad didn’t carry one) and chopped the snake in two. Dad seemed very proud of this moment 🙂
Anyway, another data point. Dad was in the thick of the jungle so maybe around more trees than **SandyHook** , so he saw more snakes. But they weren’t a “problem.”
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### Author:  [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2015, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/33 "2015-04-08T18:35:03Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#):
>
> Also: Snakes have lips?
Of course they have lips! That’s how they can play the trombone!
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### Author:  [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)
#### Post date: [April 8, 2015, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-snakes-a-big-problem-for-soldiers-in-vietnam/716424/34 "2015-04-08T19:41:36Z")
> [@get\_lives](#):
>
> No fossil record usually means it doesn’t exist.
[It’s a fossil record you’re looking for?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantopithecus)
Tell me that mofo ain’t a bigfoot!
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