Hitler’s Father and Snake Venom

ByJohn Brown

Hitler

I’ve just begun HITLER by Ian Kershaw. Fascinating. And full of zing. Did you know that Hitler’s father:

  • Smoked like a chimney
  • Went to beer table after work instead of home
  • Took little interest in family and had multiple affairs with women
  • Beat Adolf almost daily, his gentle mother sometimes waiting outside the door while he thrashed his son
  • Had a passion for bee-keeping

See, it’s weird, unexpected, almost against-type details like the last one that always seem to stimulate the zing meters.

3 ways that snakes kill

Let’s see: digest you, hundreds of blood clots, and brain attacks. Cool visuals of how the 3 types of venom work!

And article explaining more about venom and why, for instance, sea snakes have such quick killing venom or why cobras have venom that could kill an elephant with one bite.

So after reading this, I’m thinking of Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake where in the future this woman uses snakes to manufacture medicine. Not in a factory, but in the snakes themselves. And she delivers them through natures brilliantly evolved hypodermics.

But what other applications are there of this to a story? Heck, a murder mystery where you’d need to know the type of venom and the snakes nearby, a new type of dragon’s breath (instead of fire, could they breathe out a fog of one of the three toxins?), some new enzyme protein cocktail that leads to…superhero skills or is it immortality?

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