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So, I'm Being Attacked By A Giant Snake...[Hypothetically]
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They will, but then running in a straight line is still your better bet.
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I'd cross guns off the list for the reason I mentioned in my other post: If it's not instantly lethal, it's not even going to slow the snake down. Like most cold blooded animals, they can keep operating with catastrophic injuries. Unless you're a crack shot and can put a bullet in its brain (and its brain is in the part that moves fastest on attack), you're not really going to do much. Now, a shutgun, maybe, since aim's a bit less important to get a lot of head damage in. But a pistol, nuh-uh. Machetes are the go to for a lot of people working in places with dangerous snakes - big, heavy, lethal, and has a lot of uses besides fighting off a one in a million man eating snake attack.
This isn't going to happen, if it's going to eat you, you're going to be dead. If that's any consolation. Constrictors don't eat prey alive because they're very vulnerable while feeding. A struggling prey animal can literally rip their insides apart, the pet store I shop at had a ball python die this way recently when for some reason it didn't kill a feeder rat. The rat struggled, either bit or tore its esophagus quite badly and the snake slowly bled to death internally. It was pretty gruesome to hear about, and it's why I've been trying to wean my snake onto frozen rats for months. The rat actually survived long enough to be fed to another snake.
That is my entire life story, right there.
I guess to add something about snakes I would say when i was super little and doing survivalist training in the states we killed a huge copperhead and were going to BBQ it up. The thing died hours ago, was headless and skinless, but as soon as buddy put it on the grill it coiled up and tried to strike him with its gaping neck hole. The guy flipped out (and understandably so) and basically beat it back down again with his hamburger flipper.
Fucking snakes man. I get my head cut off and all my skin took, I am punching out for the day. I'm done. But those little fuckers, they just don't seem to get when dead is supposed to be dead.
creeps me the fuck out is what I'm getting at here.
There's some other stuff in there on avoidance, but I think we can all agree that the first thing you will want to do if you see a giant snake in your dream is go up and poke it.
No. Large constrictors are several times stronger than even a fairly well built man.
A knife could be either good or bad, may cause it to constrict faster or it may let go, you never know.
Unless the knife in question is WASP, its a crap shoot.
If you can avoid it all together and call a professional exterminator and/or animal control the better. Sometimes snakes are hard to identify and you never know if you got a poisonous mother fucker on your property.
You can get a copy for like, a dollar. It has a bunch of terrible scenarios in it, and they asked experts what they would recommend doing in the event it happened to them.
There are multiple crazy versions of this too, but the linked one is just a basic one that includes things like how to win a swordfight, how to lose a tail, how to land a plane and how to perform a tracheotomy. That kind of stuff.
Either kill the rat yourself (pillow case+counter+THWACK) or nuke a frozen one. If your snake doesn't want to eat, well... give it a week and then some. Your snake will soon have no problem with dead food.
We did however, keep bottles of mouthwash near the snake room. I was told that in the event the snake did get a hold of you, the alcohol in mouthwash would cause it to open up, or retreat back. You just had to pour it over the face, and basically that it did not like that. I think someone earlier mentioned cold water, but again these are things you wouldn't really have on hand in the wild.
Does the mouthwash trick work? I have no idea, and I hope I never hear about them using it. Truthfully that reptile keeper may have just been messing with us cause he was like that. Now I work with smaller snakes that you could pull off if you really needed to, but I will always wonder about mouthwash and big snakes.
Also saw one in Vietnam take a fully grown pig in much the same way.
One thing I can tell you is that you would be amazed at how fast these things are when they are hunting. The sort of speed you'd expect out of the much smaller venomous snakes. In both cases they grabbed the head, got a coil or 2 around and then used their strength to do an aligator/croc like death roll move to wrap the rest up. I really don't think even a grown man would have much hope if they were attacked in the same way.
Or a tiger.
With the size of these snakes I don't see either of those being viable options.
A king cobra, with the proper licenses, is very legal. Well, last I knew at least, not sure on current laws on venomous pets as I think they changed recently. Though it rates very high on the risky/ineffective scale. They are intelligent for snakes, which means you might have a chance of getting it to bond with you. However, as an intelligent snake it will most likely respond with "That thing is over twice as big as me, fuck you!"
The tiger is more likely to kill you than any constrictor.
How about a set of full plate mail with razor blades all over it. I imagine that would keep snakes off. Hell, thick clothing with razor blades all over it would be just as good.
How does mace work on snakes? I don't think their eyes/nose are sensitive enough, though I could be wrong. However, a taser might work, or make it so much worse. It could get the snake to let go and flee as nothing likes being shocked. However, if it causes it to convulse that could suck.
Granted we dont keep Burms, but we do have a bottle of cheap vodka in the house just in case one of our snakes goes for a feeding bite ( holds on ). Only happened once with a baby ball python though. The vodka seemed to do the trick and she let go of her own accord.
Seriously, that sounds like really good advice.
Lighting conditions really don't matter.
Also, I don't think snakes are quite as dumb as this leads on. If you're still breathing/making small movements, I doubt it's going to risk eating you before killing you.
I just picture some guy going down the checklist while getting eaten.
"Ok, number 1, don't run. Check
Number 2, lie down and make it easier to be swallowed. check
...
Number 8...knife? What the hell? You didn't say shit about a knife!
Oh, there it is, number 9. "
I haven't read it, but it would harly surprise me if 9 and 10 were recurring themes throughout the Peace Corps guide to survivial in the Amazon.
Its like a shotgun shell, but smaller so you can put it in a pistol
You'd think steps nine and ten would be higher on the list. Being up to your knees in snake seems like a really bad time to check for your knife or its sharpness.
e: and I thought that snakes start with the head
Clearly, this is a checklist written by a snake. I mean, when first handful of steps is "Stop running and make it easier to be eaten" I think I'd want to ask for a different manual.
1. Park a bulldozer on top of the snake.
2. If necessary, park a second bulldozer on the snake's head.
3. Throw the keys in the lake.
I think big constrictor snakes start by first lunging and biting on something and holding tight. Then they pull their body around and try to wrap you. I imagine if you just had the reaction of bashing the head as hard as you can as soon as it bit you, you could prolly kill the snake.
Or gouge it's eyes out.
Or maybe use your massive man hands and squeeze the snake back. I bet if you grabbed near the head around the neck you might be able to choke a snake until it passes out or dies.
Somebody send this stuff to MYthbusters!
Or I wonder how effective biting a snake is? Could a human bite a chunk out of a snake?
There's no way a huge snake would be scared off by a human biting it. I'm sure any animal thrashes and bites as it fights for its life, and most animals have scarier natural armaments than humans.
Okay, found an interesting National Geographic video. These scientists are looking for anacondas (to radio tag them, I think) by walking through a swamp grabbing up plants until they find a giant snake. (Scientists: HARDCORE!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEaz5DTgKGk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWdmqpGqA2g&feature=related
Also shows anacondas eating / killing their prey. They look super fast. I think you're just screwed and dead if you're in the coils of one.
But realistically, anytime you were travelling in an area where being attacked by a giant snake was a potential problem, you should have a knife with you capable of gutting the snakes at the very least.
Chopping power is a must. And if you can always have a neck knife as a back up of some kind. I say neck knife cause if you need it the boot knife is probably already in the snakes mouth with your boots.
I'm okay with being poisoned and dying like that. I could at least get back at the smaller, poisonous snake and kill it (REVENGE IS A DISH THAT I LIKE!) before the poison completely incapicated me. Adrenaline and all.
Being bitten by a 300 pound, all-muscle, constrictor with hooked teeth is a super painful way to go. That + the suffocation = really sucky death.
I want to avoid that.
Does anyone know if constrictors would bother with really drunk people? Alcohol on their breath and all?
But you'll still be dead.
I doubt a constrictor would care whether its prey was drunk or not.
Your best bet is to just stay away from huge snakes. Frankly, I don't think a human has a hope in hell of escaping if they're actually in the snake's coils. Go back and look at the National Geographic video--a snake wrapped itself around a duck in less than five seconds--to the point where you couldn't even see the duck--and then squeezed the hell out of it for fifteen minutes. It was not going to have any of this "prey recovers and fights me" crap. And that was just a duck.
Incidentally, in a part of the National Geographic video that I didn't post, a scientist is tracking an anaconda and it suddenly rears out of the water in front of her and opens its jaws, ready to bite her. She escapes by running the hell away. That is probably your best bet. The snake may be faster, but it may just mentally shrug and eat something else.
If you see one, back away
if it follows, back away faster
if it continues
run like a motherfucker
You won't get hunted by a venomous snake though. You'd have to step on it or something.
A constrictor might hunt you though. Scarier.
well the joke was that the person getting swallowed head first would be in the same situation as the person getting swallowed feet first except they would be doing it in the dark (well, unless snakes' innards are luminescent)