If you are bitten by a very venomous snake or spider, what exactly happens to your body that kills you?
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Three main ways, depending on the type of venom:
Necrosis – bite just causes a lot of tissue to die quickly around the site of the bite; area becomes ripe for infection, which becomes blood borne, causing sepsis and multi-organ failure.
Thrombosis – venom causes the blood to clot uncontrollably, causing big clots to get caught in important vessels supplying the lungs (pulmonary embolism) and/or brain (stroke), causing death by oxygen deprivation of the brain.
Neurotoxicity – venom causes disruption of activity of important nerves (think about the ones that supply your diaphragm, the big muscle that lets your lungs inflate to breathe), paralyzing them and usually causing death by oxygen deprivation.
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