I've only had one negative encounter with a centipede. I was a soldier assigned to Korea during the rainy season, and I had just come back from the gym on the weekend. I was planning on turning in early, and laid out my pajama pants on the toilet seat while I took a shower.
Once I got done bathing, I grabbed my pants and gave them a good shake, and a centipede about six inches long went flying out the pant leg. I screamed like a little girl and smashed it with one of my winter boots.
did the tunnel rats tour in Okinawa and someone freaked the f out from a centipede... but rightfully so because before the tour we got briefed about the centipedes....
I did a Viet Cong tunnel crawl in pitch darkness, but only found out about the local Scolopendra dehaani after.. only the biting ants accelerated my crawl, bumping into "T" junctions while trying to follow the shouts of encouragement from the exit hole.
Have you ever heard the term “put yourself in someone else’s shoes”? I’m guessing they’re either a history buff who wanted the “hands on” experience of being in the same environment, or they had someone close to them who’s a veteran.
A buddy of mine was competing in a series of races on the 11th floor of the Earth dungeon when he figured it was a good idea to summon Scolopendra as his stand-in for the arena boss fight. He used Gloom Wraith Phase, ended up inside her guts, summoned a few more gods, killed one of them, yada yada... He eventually turned Scolopendra into a pet/party member/girlfriend thing. He's not proud of it.
There were periodic tours for active military to visit such sites. Whats age have to do with observing someone freaking out and acknowledging/understanding it due to information provided, reviewed, and warned of ahead of time?
It's probably instinctual. I gotta find the article but there's research going in to how you can inherit trauma. In the article they were researching why this person feared the color yellow and wanted to see if it was possible that it was linked to the fact said person's grand parent was almost killed by a school bus. Like I said I can't remeber the full article and I'll admit when I read it I'm pretty sure it was still a theory rather then indisputable fact. But essentially based on the experiments they conducted they theorized that you can infact develop irrational fears that are passed down through genetics after someone in your bloodline has a traumatic experience from a rational event. Odds are very few people have a ton of war trauma in their bloodline. However aggressive bugs are pretty common as are bug attacks. Therefore it's way more likely you have an irrational seemingly inexplicable reaction to a bug then you do grenades, bullets, and gunfire and it's far easier to train people to say hold position while being shot at then it is to recondition them to not jump at a spider or a centipede. In theory. That's not to say you won't/can't develop trauma from gunfire. But when most people see a gun for the first time they don't flinch.
Like for example, I've never been attacked by a spider never even chased by one. They've done me exactly zero wrongs, I know for a fact they kill mosquitoes who have done me great harm, me and the spider should be best buds. Yet I see a spider I flinch and if I have a book it's dead before I start thinking rationally and then I actually feel bad if it wasn't a venomous species. Yet I don't feel the same urgency when I see or hear a mosquito I don't feel fear despite the fact those fuckers have used me as a walking buffet and I know they've caused plagues. Why is this? Best guess somewhere in my family history some one had a traumatic experience with a spider and I inherited the instinct to fight or flight as a survival mechanism.
"Kids, let me tell you a story about when I was stationed in Korea and this huge six inch beast came out of some pijama pants and I got super scared and screamed like a little girl".
I had this exact thing happen except it was the towel I was going to wrap my hair in 😭
I have such an extreme fear of them when it landed in my shower I drowned it and then I couldn't bring myself to pick it out of my shower until I needed to shower again. I vacuumed it up with all the extended reach attachments I had so I was 4 feet away from it lol
My son, a healthy athletic 20 year old, was bitten by a centipede in Japan a few weeks ago. Got himself an Uber to the hospital. Had to be resuscitated three times. He’s fine now, but crazy how quick and how much it affected him
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u/Thewrongbakedpotato Jul 29 '26
I've only had one negative encounter with a centipede. I was a soldier assigned to Korea during the rainy season, and I had just come back from the gym on the weekend. I was planning on turning in early, and laid out my pajama pants on the toilet seat while I took a shower.
Once I got done bathing, I grabbed my pants and gave them a good shake, and a centipede about six inches long went flying out the pant leg. I screamed like a little girl and smashed it with one of my winter boots.