Demonic Spiders/Real Life

Had enough of deadly and annoying baddies? Too bad, they're found in real life.

---

Animals and Aquatic Life

• Roughly 90% of all Australian Wildlife.
• Pretty much any large wild animal if you don't have a gun - big cats can kill with a neck bite, bears will maul one to death, sharks, crocodiles and hippopotami have a very painful bite, and elephants will shrug off most of an unarmed human's attacks and run them over like a steamroller.
  • As far as sharks are concerned, there are four species in particular that really take the title:
    • The infamous Great White Shark. While it does not target humans as often as movies suggest, they are so large, and have such a powerful bite that even a single "investigative bite" can be enough to sever limbs, and cause massive blood loss.
    • Tiger Sharks. While they aren't as large as Great Whites, they are much more aggressive, and do not share Great Whites' distaste for human flesh, as they will eat literally anything they can fit through their mouths.
    • Whitetip Sharks. Smaller still, and less aggressive, they are dangerous for two reasons: they also will eat nearly everything, and they swim in schools.
    • Bull Sharks. Possibly the most dangerous on this list. Despite their smaller size, they are extremely dangerous due to their extremely aggressive nature, fierce territoriality, and the fact that they can not only survive, but thrive in freshwater rivers.
  • Hippos blur the line between this and Boss in Mook Clothing. Offense? Their bowling-pin-sized teeth and huge mouth can easily crush and gore somebody. Defense? Thick skinned, of course. Speed? They can esily catch up to a fleeing human. Maternal instinct? You could rename Mama Bear to "Mama Hippo" and the name would fit better. ^[1] They're essentially amphibious tanks... and they're invasive. Yes, in Colombia, they're an invasive species. No wonder hippos are among the highest causes of death by animal in Africa.
• The world's oceans have plenty of these (besides sharks):
  • Box jellyfish can easily kill a person in less than 5 minutes with one sting, they're hard to see, and there's even an almost-impossible-to-spot tiny version (Irukandji) whose sting is painless at first, but then it develops into an unbearable full-body pain to the point where the victim can only roll on the floor screaming.
  • The blue ringed octopus. Small, pretty looking, and its saliva has deadly bacteria that will kill you on entering your bloodstream via bite.
  • Cone Snails. A very pretty looking conical snail that wields a harpoon loaded with paralytic venom. Hope you can swim properly after picking it up...
  • Rock Fish/Stonefish. They're the only poisonous fish to worry about, they have spines in their back that are poisonous enough to kill anyone unfortunate to step on them. And it's very easy to do so, since they're really good at pretending to be rocks. Lionfish are a similar species, but are less deadly and more brightly-colored.
• Alligators. They're large, extremely tough, and strong, and one bite from them usually ends up in agony, a missing limb, death, or all three, because of their infamous "death roll." During the mating season, they get even more defense and agressive towards anything. And because humans are encroaching on the (American) alligators' territory, they show up all over the place in southern Florida, especially Miami. It's not uncommon for an alligator to enter a person's backyard over there. Now you know why the reptile-control people are working overtime.

Insects and Spiders

• Brown recluse spiders. They like sleeping in dark places, and if you're unfortunate enough to get bitten by one, at best, screaming agony and a long recovery process. At worst, I've met people who have lost a limb or been rendered deaf.
  • Should be noted that as their name implies, they're really shy creatures. According to That Other Wiki, they only bite if they're pressed upon. So make sure you're wearing feet protection and shake anything you pick up off the floor.
    • As a testament to this, a family lived in a house infested with them for years, and not one incident occurred.
• Speaking of spiders, there's also the infamous Black Widow. Their bite is almost painless, but it results in body pains, difficulty breathing, and rarely^[2], death.
• Wasps in general, especially if one stings you (or you make the mistake of killing one) in the vicinity of a nest, in which case, hope you're in good cardiovascular shape. Beyond that, four species are particular scary:
  • Yellowjackets, in spite of being one of the smaller species, are more numerous, due to being A) smarter, and B) more aggressive. Also, they're carrion eaters, which means, if you're in the woods alone (a dumb move anyway, but that's beside the point), and they sting you to death, well, you can probably see where this is headed...
  • Bald-Faced Hornets. Not quite as smart, or numerous, but definitely as aggressive.
  • Pepsis Wasps, aka Tarantula Hawk, so called because they hunt Tarantulas. While not particularly aggressive, their sting is so painful, it pretty much shuts down your ability to do anything besides lie down and scream. --To the degree that a Fallout Demonic Spider is based off it.
  • Asian Giant Hornets. Three inches long, with venom that can dissolve human flesh and they can spray it like a cobra! And they eat bees! Fortunately, they only live in Asia, but, apparently, they're everywhere there. Thankfully, they're not aggressive unless the nest is threatened.
• Africanized honey bees and army ants. Fortunately however, they only spawn in certain locations. For now.
  • Far worse are Jack Jumper ants, since one sting can send someone into shock. Then there's siafu ants, the one ant that actually predates people.
  • To elaborate: colder temperatures used to be effective in keeping "killer bees" from going too far north. Now, however, they're slowly gaining a tolerance to cooler climates, and thus are beginning to spread. (Not sure whether the same is true for the ants, though.) And with climate change, those "colder temperatures" are moving toward the poles.
• Bullet ants. Found in South American rainforests, they're named for the fact that their bite feels like a gunshot wound. Some indigenous tribes have a lovely little ritual wherein a boy must wear mittens with bullet ants sown in jaws-inward and keep them on for ten minutes. And they have to do this 20 times over a few months or years to become warriors.
  • Another horrifying species of ant is the army ant. Enormous colonies of these guys travel along the ground, devouring almost anything unable or too stupid to get out of the way. And if you happen to be something that they don't want to eat, they'll still bite the everloving hell out of you and leave you for the scavengers and flies that tend to follow them around.
• Bed bugs. Yes they're real and not something made up from the bed time rhyme. They're tiny, hard to detect, and hitch a ride on everything you own. Detection is based on finding signs they were around (poop and exoskeletons they shed), and the fact that your body is now riddled with mosquito level itchy bites. And once you find them, it's too late. They also breed insanely fast, can survive harsh conditions and without food (up to a year), and extermination requires non-traditional methods because they disperse at the first sign you're poisoning them. Oh, and if you don't basically sterilize everything in the house including clothes, they'll come back.
• Mosquitoes. We've all been bitten by them right? Well, through spreading diseases, mosquitoes kill more people a year than any other animal.

Military Gear

• Drones. They are small, relatively inexpensive, can be entirely automated, can be deployed in places impossible for traditional means of warfare, and since they aren't humans, they will never be traumatized and-- this is important-- won't ever testify in the International Criminal Court (and the evidence of their involvement is as easy to be erased as your hard drive). Every country worth its salt is researching this technology. You say war never changes? Well, it's changing right before your very eyes.
• The AC-130 a massive plane with enough firepower to level entire armies on the ground. In Afghanistan, and Iraq this is the one plane that terrorist fear the most besides drones, when they see it they start running to the nearest cave to get out of sight.

People

• The Highway Patrol. If one of these guys sees you going too fast, it's all over. Don't try to outrun them, you'll only make things worse. They're a subversion, however, because they're doing this for your protection and the protection of others.
  • The same thing can't always be said about placement of certain Speed Traps.
  • In some jurisdictions, they can pull you over for going too slow, because this has a harmful effect of disrupting traffic flow. Of course, when everyone else is already breaking the speed limit (going at say 80MPH) and you're a law abiding driver going at 55/65MPH, it's a catch 22.
• Street thugs and gangbangers are fairly self explanatory.
• In most of the 21st Century's wars, NATO troops outnumber insurgent or enemy troops heavily, and are backed up by air support, artillery, Tanks, APC's, superior training and technologically advanced weapons. On top of that, most NATO armies are all-volunteer militaries, meaning that even if the enemy is fighting for his own right to paradise, the soldiers fight for their countries, "for something greater than themselves." In the eyes of the enemy -- textbook example.
  • Just as often inverted through sheer tenacity (Russia and Finland in WWII, Vietnam, Bosnia, any conflict involving Afghanistan) since serving your country by defending your home and family is always a greater motivator than serving your country by going halfway across the continent or globe to kill people for ideological reasons. When insurgent armies can strike anywhere without fear of enemy fire and kill an entire squad before conventional army units can respond, they turn into this trope.
• In most modern wars tanks fill the role when combatants lack anti-armor capabilities or tanks of their own.
• Pirates are these when you're traveling in the ocean with no means to protect yourself.
• Any special forces unit would qualify for this status in the eyes of their enemies; examples are the US SEALs, Russian Spetsnaz, or British SAS.
• Snipers in general. Nigh-impossible to spot (they're either half a mile away, camoflaged, or both), and they can deliver a One-Hit Kill with nearly no warning.

Plants

• Cholla cactus. Okay, so it's not lethal, but it'll sure as hell stop you short if you're trying to do much of anything. It looks deceptively innocent compared to the many other horribly spiny things that inhabit the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico; it's also called "teddy bear cholla" because it actually looks fuzzy unless you're very, very close. As it happens, the real reason for this appearance is that it's absolutely covered in semitranslucent, needle-sharp, barbed spines about as thin as a single hair. These are attached to easily-detachable "links" of cactus, which break off so they can take root elsewhere. What this amounts to is that if you so much as brush the things, you'll end up with a three-inch-across ball of spikes attached to your leg. Even once you manage to get the main body of the thing off, it can take hours to dig all the spines out, since they're very difficult to see. Forget the cacti you see in cartoons; these are the ones you have to watch out for.
• There's a Demonic Spider Plant Monster in Russia and Eastern Europe, called giant hogweed (Latin Heracleum sosnowskyi, Russian borschevik). This is a plant, just as invasive as kudzu, the sap of which causes chemical burns. Yes, honest to goodness chemical burns, like mustard gas. There are many cases of child casualties caused by unknowingly messing with this plant. It also can grow to ten or fifteen feet tall, forming massive hazardous shrubbery. The worst part? It was cultivated on purpose by the Soviet authorities who thought it could be good fodder for cattle (it isn't). Hence the common nickname "Stalin's revenge".
  • Some Victorian prat introduced them into Britain because he thought they looked nice. Kids who don't know what they are sometimes use the nice hollow stems as blowpipes or pretend telescope tubes... honest-to-goodness chemical burns about the mouth and eyes. Heck, Genesis made a song about the fight between hogweed and humans...

Others

• Some pathogenic microbes that are fairly ubiquitous, hard to detect, and lethal with a week.
  • Naegleria fowleri lives just about everywhere and infection is rare, but warm water can act as it's vector. If it enters through the olfactory mucosa or cribriform plate it can access the brain pan were it becomes pathogenic causing immense damage to the central nervous system with primary amebic meningoencephalitis.
• Many prehistoric animals, like Tyrannosaurus Rex, Megalodon etc, fall under this. For example, T.rex had the strongest bite force of any land animal to have ever lived, could reach lengths of up to 42 feet, and could reach speeds of up to 25 miles per hour. It took an asteriod the size of Mount Everest to finnish them off. Despite this, T.rex was actually the seventh largest land predator.
  • Speaking of which the Megalodon was basically a great white shark the size of a whale. Its also big enough to eat whales.

---

Back to Demonic Spiders

1. ↑ Male hippos, even ones of the same herd, have to ALWAYS show that they aren't a threat, or the female will kill them right on the spot.
2. ↑ Usually only in the very old or very young