Page 13 - Deadliest Snakes

after he said this, he collapsed,” the instructor recalls.
“He was breathing very shallow and started gasping for
air.” Within an hour of being bitten, Layton was dead of
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heart failure.
Layton’s death may have been unusually quick, but
the speed was the only unusual aspect of the situation.
Even with prompt antivenom treatment, many black
mamba victims die—and without it, the picture is unre-
lentingly grim. The black mamba’s bite is thought to be
100 percent fatal without treatment.

This is bad news in rural Africa, where medical facili-
ties are few and far between and antivenom is not easily
available. In these areas, the only real protection against
the black mamba is staying away from it—preferably far,
far away. Anyone who gets too close to the world’s most
dangerous snake is flirting with death.

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