How To Survive a Python Attack
How To Survive a Python Attack – What To Do?
I think about this scenario far too often, I’m looking for snakes at night and I step past a rock and a large python attacks me. There have been a couple of times I have been near thick foliage and undergrowth and heard something coming closer to me. I couldn’t see it, but it was in there.
Ha! I sound paranoid, right? You spend 3-8 hours in Thailand’s rainforest by yourself and see what your mind does.
HOW CAN YOU KILL A PYTHON?
You could sever the spinal cord at the neck and stop the python from contracting around you. A deep cut to the neck would probably sever some arteries and could help to bleed the snake out.
Pythons Get So Big They’re Scary
Reticulated pythons and Burmese pythons are the big snakes in Thailand that can kill you. Here in my area, we have the retics. I’ve seen one between 6-7 meters long. I’ve seen one eat a goat. They can certainly eat a small-framed human being.
Most nights I’m fine. I don’t fear ghosts. I don’t fear the people I meet in the jungle – most times. I don’t fear venomous snakes because I figure anything I do that gets me in trouble is within my control for the most part. There’s a very slight chance I’ll die in the forest from a venomous snake bite, and I don’t fear that at all.
I do fear something hunting me though. Tigers, leopards, bears, and big pythons.
What to Do When a Python Tries to Kill You?
How can you fight a python? Recently a rubber tapper in Indonesia went out alone at night to collect latex from the rubber trees on the plantation. He didn’t come back. Friends went looking for him.
They found him in the stomach of what they said was a seven-meter-long Reticulated Python. That’s a big snake. People were incredulous, could it REALLY eat a person?
What eats alligators? Yup, they do. Are you KIDDING ME? They can eat ALLIGATORS. What makes you think a person is any different?
Wait, here’s the best line from the entire BBC article which covered this story… “Pythons rarely kill and eat humans, although there are occasional reports of them swallowing young children or animals.”
Wait, there are “OCCASIONAL reports of them swallowing animals? There are thousands! Happens thousands of times every day. Pythons eat dogs, cats, birds, chickens, pigs, alligators, small deer, and many other animals!
Here’s something else dumb they said, “Reticulated pythons are among the world’s longest reptiles and suffocate their victims before swallowing them whole.”
Just a few minutes of research would have turned up the fairly recent study that shows that people who die as a result of a python attack, die because their blood pressure raises so high – that the heart cannot beat. The heart is stopped and death occurs. It isn’t asphyxiation that is the cause of death.
Anyway… here’s the BBC article on this story: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39427458
So, the purpose of this article is to entertain WHAT TO DO IF A PYTHON HAS BITTEN YOU – AND IS WRAPPING AROUND YOU QUICKLY.
How To Survive a Python Attack?
- Python bites you.
- Pull out a knife as fast as possible. The knife should have a lanyard to wrap around your wrist so you can do #3.
- Keep the python from wrapping around you at all costs. Repeatedly unwrap until you can safely use one hand to #4.
- When possible – stab the snake in the neck, side, or belly repeatedly and many different places. Don’t stop. Stop when the snake lets go and you can run away as fast as you can.
- Hope and pray the python lets go.
That has been my plan for about the last fifteen years. I’m not sure if it would work. I’d like to have a better plan. If you can think of one, DO LET ME KNOW.
Some other ideas… and yes, these are bad – horrific – but, if you’re in a life-or death situation, you need to do whatever you can to stay alive, right? I mean, who wants to become snake food?
More Ideas to Help You Survive an Attack
- If the eyes are visible at all – jam a knife, pen, rock, stick, anything – into the eyes repeatedly – even ripping the eyes out if at all possible.
- Keep a strong serrated knife handy. It’s possible to see through the snake at least until you reach the vertebrae. See #5.
- Bring a container of strong mouthwash, or isopropyl rubbing alcohol and keep it in your shirt pocket – easily accessible. Snakes have been shown to let go when they encounter a face full of mouthwash.
- If you could keep a small torch handy, you could fire that up and fry his brain with it. It would have to operate with one hand. Hopefully, you’d even have one hand free to use it.
- I wonder if a small saw would be the best weapon to have. A saw with a blade on it that can see through 2-3 inch thick branches might be ideal. Not sure where you’d keep a saw of that type handy on you at all times, but you’d be damn glad you had it when the time came. You could put it on your boonie cap. I think this might be the best violent way to remove the snake. You could see through a python’s vertebral column in a matter of seconds with the right hacksaw.
Anyway, that’s what I came up with.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE BEST IDEA to SURVIVE a PYTHON ATTACK?
TELL ME WHAT YOU’D DO…
More Reticulated Python Info >
Thailand Snakes – Venomous and Non-Venomous snake information!
I would learn to walk on stilts like Sheetrock workers use. Then your feet are always off the ground!
If I had to go near one, have a good knife on each side,and or firearm, keep at least one arm free,even if I had to offer other one, then fight like there’s no tomorrow, cause there won’t be. Aim neck & head
I’m going to the Everglades tomorrow to work with contract python hunters trying to reduce the invasive species. I looked this up as a precaution as I am terrified of snakes. I’ll let you know how the hunters deal with an attack.
I think they just kill them with guns, don’t they?
I am picturing a python would be a tiny bit less of a problem than a boa. But if I were to decide to hike/camp in the forest, I would definitely want the bowie knife with the serrations, like one of the guys said above. If I were asleep, I would want that knife near my arm that is down on the ground at all times, hence if I rolled over, grab knife and roll over and have it at the ready.
If he’s trying to coil around you while sleeping, the arm that’s towards that ground should still be free to grab your knife and reach around and stab/cut that same area at the base of the head.
I am also picturing coming up on a python and he sees me first and there comes that mouth and I raise my left arm to protect face/neck and grabbing knife with right hand and like said, first making stabbing actions at the are of the medulla oblongata and then using a sawing action. I also like the idea of dropping so you can press on his head while stabbing/cutting at the base of the back of the head/neck. You cut through that spinal column/medulla, he’s rendered helpless and now all you have to do is pry your arm/leg out of his mouth.
I would figure if alcohol really works, taking it over mouthwash, since the mouthwash does not have the same concentration of alcohol.
But another thought is taking a handheld taser and if the python has your arm in his mouth, hitting him again at the base of the skull.
It would seem punching would be worthless, ever punch a guy in the gut? If they aren’t ready for it, you get them, but if they tighten their muscles it’s not near the same impact? Well, a python/boa is all muscle, it’s like punching the bed! I am sure a python can hold his breath for a little bit, so blocking his nasal passages seems worthless.
I can’t see where cutting his eyes out will help, sure it would hurt and he can’t see but he’s in war so he’s gonna keep at it.
I suppose you could try reasoning with him, but even most human animals could care less if they are leaving your kids as orphans, or are caring for your mother, so that’s out, as well!
Yeah, if it were me, I would definitely have an extremely sharp knife with a very sharp, skinny point and a very sharp serrated section on the same side as the blade (not having to turn the knife with serration on the tang) and a bottle of alcohol into the mouth, if he hasn’t actually gotten attached to me yet. The alcohol is also great (but painful) to clean out a wound.
WOW, that sums it up. Any or all of those could work. Luckily we have very VERY few attacks like this in Thailand. Never knew a tourist to be targeted. Children and small framed people in the villages working in agriculture seem to the only target, but infrequently.
It’ll take too long to take effect
Yeah, I’m still not sure what to do to be honest. I hope that I could reach my knife.
Hey guys im from Malaysia, encounter 1 when I was fishing on my kayak last week, while I was looking at the front when I was fishing, a sudden look at the back of my kayak almost gave me heart attack, a yellow reticulated python was swimming towards my kayak and I immediately paddle away and gladly it couldn’t catch up on me and swim to the bank after that, after I paddle far away from that snake, I pull out my phone and zoom very far and try to take a video of it since I am too scare to go near that thing to take a clear picture. I was looking for advise on how to deal with this situation if Im really been attack by that snake and eventually I found this article, leave some advise for me if you have some, what I can think of is carrying a knife on kayak on me but Im afraid that I dont have chance to use it after it starts to restrict.
I think the snake would not have tried to get on your kayak when it saw you there. It was almost certainly not trying to attack you. Pythons love the water – freshwater or saltwater and it isn’t uncommon to see them swimming there. You’ll be fine on kayaks and small boats.