by Jon » Mar 24, 2011 1:57 am
Doing the old cut the bite and suck the venom out stuff is great for the lone ranger or the guys on bonanza but in real life you may just bleed to death. If you are healthy enough to do active sports you probably wont die from a snake bite. Variables are just how your system reacts to the venom. One bee sting will kill some people, others will take dozens stings and just be sore. There is some evidence that electricity may be your friend. I have read that stun guns applied to the bite area break down the enzymes in many/most venoms. Haven't heard much about it in a few years but I never bought a stun gun because if I was alone and zapping myself I figured that if anyone came along and saw what i was doing that they would figure I was from California and just having a good time.
Seriously just watch where you and your hands and feet are going as best you can and hope for the best. Once you get past the twighlight zone I doubt there is much reason for snakes to be there and you can relax. A friend and I were at a dig and it was winter time, in a VERY tight area there were 3 rattlesnakes about 20 feet from the surface. Cave was exhaling warm air but even so the buzz tails were slow and lazy. We on the other hand decided that summer was a better time to explore their winter home. I learned that day that we certainly have snakes to speak of.
I wonder..... would a carbide light be a plus or a minus???? A heat source to strike at or a flame to retreat from???? Maybe a carbide caver is a safe caver??? A ceiling burner with a turbo boost flame thrower???
Scorpions worry me as they are small enough to miss seeing and I have seen them (via UV lights) further from light. Have been nailed more than once (not in a cave though) by bark scorpions. Although not fun for me, nowheres near fatal (at least to me). I hate land lobsters almost as much as pit vipers. Now a Dodge Viper is something I would love to have.......
By the way, the suction devices in those kits really can't do much. Think about it if one of them could suck venom out through your skin, a toilet plunger would be a deadly weapon. A single plunge to the body would suck enough blood out of the body and away from the brain to kill a person.
Seriously, as elastic as skin is, the only way you could suck venom out would be not through the pin prick puncture but through the skin itself. Think how many teenagers would hemorrhage to death because of hickeys!!!