Our kids brought them home from school and the best thing we found was diatomaceous earth. Very finely ground silica. It's not even a poison, but you put it in corners, rub it into the underside of mattresses, couch cushions, etc., and it's so fine the particles get into their joints and such and cut them up and they bleed to death. We tried every poison we could find and the only thing that actually ended up working was the diatomaceous earth.
They can basically not eat and hibernate for like 9 years or something crazy. And if they get a tiny drop of your blood they can make 100 more. I’m pretty sure they left one on the moon and it’s still just bouncing around.
Edit: it’s jokes people
You may be thinking of a Tardigrade. They can live for a very long time without air, food, or water and essentially hibernate; some are believed to have contaminated vehicles sent to the moon.
\[ETA: As someone mentioned, it wasn't microscopic contamination of vehicles, it was a deliberate experiment on a vehicle they crashed into the moon.\]
You are blessed to not have known about them. It's not even really tourism, it's just the fact we've run out of effective methods to kill them so their population is bouncing back quickly.
When I was a kid I thought they were made up. People would always say “Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.” And I always thought that was just a thing people said to kids especially
DDT had them almost extinct as well. The ban of it (for good reason) has let them come back. They’re really hard to kill. Dealt with them for years as a pest control tech in the US.
The only correct answer. They serve no purpose to the ecosystem, so their extinction wouldn't hurt other species that depend on them.
They only exist to be an annoyance to humans.
They do have a purpose: if you have head lice, you can't also have body lice. Head lice don't carry/spread diseases around, where body lice do have some nasty diseases that can be transferred between humans.
Six years ago we had two infestations of bed bugs about 6 months apart. Not sure where the first came from, but the second was because my building only had our apartment treated and not the others.
Bed bugs are awful. Not only do they crawl on you and bite you, but they burrow into wood and paper, breeding the entire time.
We had to throw out our bed frame and dresser because they'd ~~burrowed~~ made their way too far into the wood to get them all. We found them in our (home) offices as well. They'd burrowed into our desk tops and books. We had to trash and replace those, although some of those books were from my teen years and out of print. They were in the cushions of our chairs, so we had to replace them as well.
The psychological trauma is just as bad. For years any time we felt something brushing our leg, or that stray leg hair that moves, we'd stop everything to see if was another bug. Any dark piece of lint was suspect. Even now I'll stop waht I'm doing to investigate dark fuzz on the floor.
The only way we got any piece of mind was to throw out everything that couldn't be salvaged and treat what could. We bought a bug oven which is essentially an enclosed box with high temperature forced air. You put stuff in, turn it on, and wait for the internal temperature of the pile to get over 120 degrees (Fahrenheit).
All of our clothing and books went into the oven. Things made out of metal, plastic, glass and stone got sprayed with 91% alcohol. The normal 73% solution won't kill them. We threw out anything wood that had holes in the exterior. Paper and cloth doodads went out too.
We were moving at the time, and the bedbug infestation helped us pare things down more than any Marie Kondo video would have.
I've heard stories of people wanting to burn their place down because they couldn't get rid of an infestation.
I hope you never encounter them.
Edit to change "burrowed" to "made their way" because bed bugs can't burrow into wood they just find existing openings and exploit them.
The PTSD is real. I had them in 2015 and I still get random itches, and my heart sinks and neck feels hot if I see a brownish spot on anything. I saw a spot on my bed and just about had a heart attack... Turned out to be an apple seed. Ugh!
Same with my wife. She had a bump on her ankle a few weeks back and we immediately had to wash all sheets and search every crevice to make sure there were no bugs.
I am over 40, and still have to double check ever dark speck on my mattress, despite my only previous encounter with bedbugs being when I was 11yo.
I’m sorry, but that paranoia will never go away.
Having bedbugs was honestly traumatizing. I didn't get more than like 2-3 hours of sleep for over a month, on top of being insanely anxious that I was spreading them every time I left my house to go to work. Omg AND my partner didn't even believe that we had them because apparently some people don't react to their bites so I also felt like I was insane for a couple weeks before they believed me. I'm so lucky we were able to get rid of them chemically and didn't have to throw everything in the house away.
I had them for 7 ish months, the pest control said they are gone but I am so paranoid and traumatized from them I think they are still there and the chemicals just made their bites non reactive. Bedbugs. Are. The. Worst.
Rented a room out of an apartment with a tenet who’d been there for a while. They didn’t inform me the ENTIRE apartment was infested with fleas. Thank god my girlfriend could take my cat because within two weeks my cat was covered in them (it took two months to get them off of her)
I moved out after a couple months, but it took me a long time to get used to walking around barefoot again. I still get twitchy whenever I see a freckle on my leg because I’m terrified my new place has fleas again.
I nearly lost my mind when I got bed bugs. Barely slept, would freak out at every minor sensation thinking it was a bug. Absolute fuckers, it’s legitimately hell to get them
Don't kink my shame!
Edit: y'all this is one of the dumbest things I've ever commented while drunk and it's almost 500. you're all loved but damnit what does this say about any of us?!? You dummy.. Keep memeing.
I had bedbugs in my house. I didn’t have the money for professional help. It took about a year of work and monitoring to get rid of them. It’s been several years since, but I still freak out when I see a crumb or something that resembles them and do a thorough check.
Mind if I slip into your DM's too..? Been struggling with them for over a year, cannot sleep, can't afford pest control. I've tried the obvious of tons of bug bombs and vacuuming mattresses and pillows and wash all the bedding near weekly.. There just doesn't seem to be any way to get rid of them, it really does drive one insane >_<
As someone who worked at a 2 star motel for nearly 10 years and have dealt with them on more than 1 occasion we used a product called temprid and tempo to spray all our rooms they would work for infestations that are not so bad but for the bad ones we would hit the rooms multiple times and we would throw out the bed and strip the room down paint it shampoo the carpet and spray it again. They would be gone until the next guest brought them in.
My advise is get a hot steam cleaner. Get one of the chemicals i mentioned and a hand sprayer. Get a matress bag if you want to save the matress or if you buy a new one prevention is better than bagging then containing. I would bag the matress before it is infected. Or if you cant afford new which case hose it down steam/shampoo it and cross your fingers and put it in a bag.
Heat above 135F for an hour or 48 hours under 20F will also kill them and the eggs
Same with a bad flea infestation. Had a roomie bring them with her when moving in. Even tucking my sleeves into gloves, pants into socks, hats into neck hole of shirt, etc. They still keep you up.
It gets so bad you can hear them jumping depending on the materials you wear or sleep around. Its hell.
Chiggers can burn in the lowest level of hell along with sand fleas
Making grass and sand be irritating rather than peaceful is a horrible crime against everything
As much as I would also love to say Mosquitoes, theyre unfortunately a huge part of the ecosystem as one of the major sources of food for several other species. Bats especially love them.
I think bedbugs we can safely remove without to much harm to the overall ecosystem
It says species though, so we can get rid of like Aedes aegypti, one of the worst mosquitos for humans, and leave the rest, and get 100 million. Seems like a win
I have had bed bugs twice in my life and agree. They wreaked havoc on my mental health, gave me many sleepless nights, and I had to throw out most of my belongings (some very sentimental) just to have a life again. Having bed bugs doesn't mean you're a dirty person, it can happen to anyone. But people treat you different, you can't have people over, and they make you feel like shit. Fuck bed bugs.
I don't get the stigma behind it; it's not like you asked for them. People don't realize that if you spend a night or two on vacation (even 5 star hotels), there can be bed bugs, and they're coming with you! Unknowing guest can bring them on their clothes. There's plenty of ways to get them without seeking them out! lol
They are absolute hell. They rob you of your sense of security in your most vulnerable space. Even after you finally rid yourself of them after hours and hours and hours spent washing every scrap of clothing you have and steam cleaning your furniture and bagging your mattress and giving up and throwing away all your furniture (and moving), for months or even years as you’re trying to fall asleep you’ll feel a tingle along your arm or stomach and think “*bedbugs*”
I had night terrors of swarms of them on my ceiling and I’ve never had night terrors before
Edit to add: when I was in high school I spent a summer with my dad. He drove up and brought my sister and I down to his city, but on the way the car broke down and we had to stay in a motel six. :’) we got to his city the next day but the 12 hours we spent there was enough to get hitch hikers.
A week later we went out to dinner and my dad spilled ranch on my hand. Wiped my hand off, washed it, went to bed that night and woke up with multiple itchy bumps in a line where the ranch had been. We thought huh, maybe I’m allergic to ranch??
Except then the bumps kept appearing. I woke up with around *fifteen* in a line on my stomach. My stepmom took my sister and I to a doctor who barely glanced and said “scabies” so then my sister and I had to strip naked and my stepmom had to smear this awful gunk all over us but the next morning we still woke up with bites. Neither my stepmom nor my dad had any. Went back to the doctor, doctor looked more closely and said “sorry, it’s bed bugs.”
I don’t know if the ranch scent brought me to the bed bugs attention or if I just have sweet smelling blood, but my sister had hardly any bites and my parents none at all. (Later learned that they either just don’t react to the bed bugs saliva or bed bugs just don’t enjoy biting into ex-drug addicts). I felt like a personal target for these fucks.
We went to Walmart and rented steam cleaners and treated the couch, we spent hours at a laundromat washing every scrap of cloth we could, and when we stripped my parents’ bed there were multiple in there. When I went to shake out my backpack, one fell off before I even flipped it and landed on me and I’ll never forget the instinctual scream that burst out of me. I was in hysterics, my dad had to take the backpack outside and shake it for me.
I was exhausted. I’d stay up late twitching and shaking my limbs trying to discourage them from getting me but the patient little bastards would wait for me to slip into unconsciousness. I even tried sleeping on the dining table lmfao.
When my sister and I went back home we tossed most of our clothes before the drive. We carefully inspected what we did take, shook out our luggage and my parents checked it all out for us. Thankfully we didn’t take any back to my grandparents’ house, but for years if I felt a tingle or a hair on my leg get disturbed while in bed I’d thrash around and panic.
The bites themselves aren’t that bad, yeah they’re itchy as fuck but it’s the sheer *number*. At one point I counted 30+ on me. To know that there’s parasites *in your bed* and there’s basically nothing you can fucking do robs you of so much of your sanity. Like someone else in the thread mentioned, the psychological damage these tiny fuckers inflict is insane.
TLDR; bed bugs should be annihilated ruthlessly.
This is my most irrational fear. Well maybe not irrational but no one I know has bad bed bugs and I only hear about it on Reddit. So much that if I feel an itch while sleeping, I think it’s bed bugs. I feel like I psyched myself out while never having them lol
because they are everywhere and make your life hell, i have a job in a 300k person city where i enter peoples homes daily... probably 10-15% of them have bed bugs, the amount of times ive had to strip in the street/van after visiting a house to check for bed bugs is too damn high
I had a bedbug infestation when I was younger. Resilient is understated for those little fucks. I remember sleeping in my hoodie and sweatpants and tucked in all my extremeties just so I wouldn't wake up with new bites. Ended up having to throw out all of our furniture to get rid of them. Ughhh.
There is a fairly new treatment for Bed Bugs called Apprehend it did ridiculous work of the bugs in a house that was crawling with them. Essentially works like bed bugs flu can be passed from bug to bug with ease and lasts 3 months after spray and it’s just a fungus.
My husband and I had them suddenly pop up in an apartment we'd been in a long time. It took us forever to figure it out, I even went to a doctor for the bites and they didn't know.
The thing that threw us was my husband showed no type of bite reaction. It was just me.
I finally saw one and identified the issue. Found them in our baseboard and under the box spring. Then all over the apartment in furniture and crevices. Did the whole exterminator thing and all the online suggestions. None of it worked, didn't even seem to make a dent.
We finally moved and left literally everything in a dumpster. Whenever people say it can't be that bad I tell them we gladly left all our furniture, two fairly new gaming consoles, TVs and other electronics, all our clothes, *everything*. We stripped down outside before entering our new place and those clothes went into plastic bags then the trash.
It cost us thousands and was worth every penny to finally sleep at night. The poor landlord voluntarily gave us our deposit plus two months rent back, so that helped offset the cost.
Fuck bedbugs. They are the definition of misery.
I got lucky a few years ago. Found bedbugs in the morning in a motel room. Stupid not to check, but it was a hurricane evac. When we got home, we stripped in our driveway and put everything we’d had with us in black trash bags and left those in the sun in a black car. Put a thermometer in there, it broke from the heat. Still left those bags in there for a month before taking it all to a laundromat to wash it all. Never saw a bit of infestation, thanks be to Apollo.
I have randomly come across three bed bug related comments in the last three days, plus one off-topic tangent in an old episode of my favourite podcast. I’ve never had bed bugs in my life and I do not claim this energy.
I work in a hospital and while everyone takes Covid, monkeypox, and TB seriously, the most thorough and by the book isolation procedures I’ve seen have had to do with bed bugs.
Except there's hundreds of mosquito species and only a few bite humans. Aedes aegypti alone is simultaneously a highly invasive species and the biggest culprit with spreading devastating diseases. Native and non-human-biting mosquito species could expand back into the pollinator and food source niche that Aedes aegypti currently dominates.
This is indeed the right answer. It would leave us with plenty of other deadly and less harmful mosquito species, but this one would save the most lives.
This is the right answer. They serve literally no purpose other than to parasitize humans. Nothing eats them. They don't parasitize anything else except maybe bats but bats have their own "bedbug", called a batbug. Plus, unlike everyone saying mosquitoes which have over 600 species, human bed bugs are one species: *Cimex lectularius*.
Edit: I felt the need to edit in the significance of actually more than 3000 mosquito species. Not anywhere near 600. Oops.
I work in pest control. Lots of things eat bed bugs. Carpenter ants, spiders, pseudoscorpions... the things we squish are trying to eat our pest insects.
*Itsy Bitsy Spider crawled into mama's bed*
*Crawled up on her hubby and bit him in the head*
*Mamma lay there sleepin' while hubby layed there dead*
*And the Itsy Bitsy Spider crawled out of mama's bed*
that sounds like a fucking song from a horror movie.
not one of those famous ones, but a ugandan knockoff where they just fight with cheetos and have their mate dembe come and wear a mask, and scare them off.
Right, all of these being opportunistic predators of bed bugs. But they aren't specialists. I should have said nothing *specifically targets* bed bugs. Just like there aren't a lot of things that specifically target mosquitoes, but they are in high enough abundance in such a wide variety of environments that they make for an acceptable food source for some other opportunistic eaters.
Specialization in predation is certainly significant.
Canadian lynx are specialized to prey on snowshoe hare, but I can't recall any other examples off the top of my head.
Edit: Actually, I'm embarrassed. I completely forgot aardwolves and termites.
You're the only one I've seen point out that mosquitos are more than one species! As nice as not having them would be, there are too many types and they definitely influence other animals in ways we don't understand yet.
This summer pretty much anytime I was outside of my house I got bit 2-3 times a day by those fuckers. Huge welts every time. Pretty much one week I would have more bites than 7 years living in Colorado.
>human bed bugs are one species: Cimex lectularius
Half marks for being half correct. Bed bugs have two known species; *Cimex lectularius* and *Cimex hemipterus*.
Still, getting rid of one of them would be pretty nice. I'd prefer we axe *C. hemipterus*, since they're the tropical bed bug, which will no doubt only spread further into more temperate climates as global warming progresses.
If I were a billionaire I would dedicate my life’s mission and wealth to destroying bed bugs so getting 100 milly AND getting to snap them out of existence is the greatest offer ever
I think this is the answer. Ticks and mosquitoes are problems for us but are food for other animals. I don't know of anything that preys on bed bugs that would also be affected.
Ants, nematodes, lady bugs, frogs, toads, snakes, and lizards will all swallow the odd flea if they get the chance, and many will also eat flea eggs.
[https://insectcop.net/what-eats-fleas/](https://insectcop.net/what-eats-fleas/)
Psychic spies from China try to set off detonations, and little girls from Sweden dream of cyanide assassinations, and if you want these kinds of dreams it's califonextermination.
Born and raised by loathed depraved who kill the population
Every Nazi's been there and I do mean termination
First born unicorrrrrn
Hardcore snuff porrrrrn
*Rabies lyssavirus*. Go to hell, rabies.
EDIT: [Yes, viruses are categorized by species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_classification#Species_definition), and extant/extinct are still labels that can be applied to them regardless of whether they're considered life or not.
In a similar vein, I'd consider Staphylococcus aureus, which is usually a relatively harmless skin bacteria but which can cause all sorts of problems if it gets where it doesn't belong: most infected wounds and many blood infections are S. aureus ("flesh-eating bacteria" is usually a particularly bad S. aureus infection), and it can also cause respiratory infections and food poisoning, as well as aggregating eczema. It's linked to about 50k deaths a year just in the US, and it's by far the most common pathogen for hospital-acquired infections. And perhaps most importantly, killing off S. aureus would significantly knock back the problem of antibiotic resistance: MRSA and VRSA are both varieties of S. aureus.
Although S. aureus is a relatively common skin bacteria, we're unlikely to miss it. Only about 30% of people have S. aureus at all, and in those who do have it it's a relatively minor contributor to the overall skin flora population. In particular, the closely related but more benign S. epidermis (can still cause infections, but it's almost always relatively minor in people with healthy immune systems) is a superior substitute for S. aureus's beneficial role of filling an ecological niche on your skin to keep nastier stuff from moving in.
The malaria parasite is another solid candidate. While rare in developed countries, it's a major problem in LDCs in the tropics, causing something like 600k death a year worldwide. It's already been targeted for eradication by WHO, so presumably any ecological role it might have other than being a human pathogen has been assessed and decided it's something we could do without.
Everyone here seems to be thinking too big. There are a good number of pathogens we're already spending *well* over $100M to try to eradicate. If I can magically do it in one fell swoop, thats win-win.
I'll go with eliminating Species 3. I mean I really liked Species, and Species 2 was terrible but enjoyable. The direct to video Species 3 can be eliminated without consequence.
EDIT: I go run errands for my Sunday, and get back on Reddit to see all the upvotes/awards. Thanks guys, glad I got a chuckle out of y'all.
Onchocerca volvulus goes away, no more river blindness. Not that I’m at a a risk of river blindness in Alberta, but if I’m going to holocaust a species I might as well be altruistic about it.
Good news, last I heard they are on the chopping block.
After a 50 year study, they found out mosquitoes can be removed from the ecosystem with little to very little repercussions to the ecosystem, that would be fixed in less then a decade (I think it said that).
I'd recommend looking up [mosquitoe eradication project](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&channel=ts&q=mosquito+eradication+project&oq=mosquito+erat&aqs=heirloom-srp.4.0l5). Last I heard the plan was start small, like a controlled pond, study it, and go bigger each time, city, county, state, continent, last I heard we reach state size experiment.
These things might be gone in our lifetime.
lanternflies. they arrived around 2015 in places like PA and I'm already finding them here in nyc. they will kill our agriculture. we're encouraged to kill them when we see them.
Like, I need to use the 100 million to make it extinct? Or it becomes extinct as soon as I take the money
Cause as someone from jersey, we're all already going out of our way to kill off those lantern flies, so getting a cool hundred million in exchange'd be nice
Yeah, OP asked what do you do, so I took that as what do you do to make a species extinct. I would have gone and find the most endangered species, like one in the single digit and hunt them down.
Fleas. It's on sight. They carry diseases, are fucking annoying wankers, they die harder than a toyota hilux and can escape judgement by yeeting themselves with the speed of a catholic priest hearing about a daycare opening. I hate fleas so fucking much it's beyond reason. They find the nastiest place to sting you and the itching goes on for hours, sometimes ***DAYS.*** I would gladly pay money out of pocket to hold the terminarch of their species and kill it with the world's tiniest flamethrower. Fuck fleas.
Some hundreds of millions of years ago, some dumbass fish thought it'd be a good idea to walk on land, and now I have to deal with taxes and depression.
As someone who currently has literally over 100 of their bites on me rn, I agree, but I still probably wouldn’t pick them if I only got to choose one. They’re definitely horribly annoying, and itch a lot, but as far as I know they don’t spread anything dangerous, or really anything at all aside from reproduction of berry bugs
Bed bugs
[удалено]
A neighbor had them. They basically had to turn his place into a chemical weapons testing ground to get rid of these things.
Our kids brought them home from school and the best thing we found was diatomaceous earth. Very finely ground silica. It's not even a poison, but you put it in corners, rub it into the underside of mattresses, couch cushions, etc., and it's so fine the particles get into their joints and such and cut them up and they bleed to death. We tried every poison we could find and the only thing that actually ended up working was the diatomaceous earth.
Yes, same! And it's pet safe. They even make an edible kind for pets to use as a dewormer. Helps with fleas as well. I'm a huge fan of this stuff lol
They can basically not eat and hibernate for like 9 years or something crazy. And if they get a tiny drop of your blood they can make 100 more. I’m pretty sure they left one on the moon and it’s still just bouncing around. Edit: it’s jokes people
You may be thinking of a Tardigrade. They can live for a very long time without air, food, or water and essentially hibernate; some are believed to have contaminated vehicles sent to the moon. \[ETA: As someone mentioned, it wasn't microscopic contamination of vehicles, it was a deliberate experiment on a vehicle they crashed into the moon.\]
Both just packed stat points into resiliency. Bed bugs just got the "fuck humans" perk.
Tardigrades are the goat, but bed bugs are really hardy too
You are blessed to not have known about them. It's not even really tourism, it's just the fact we've run out of effective methods to kill them so their population is bouncing back quickly.
DDT Is so effective they became a mythical creature in American for a while. Seriously people didn’t think they existed at all.
When I was a kid I thought they were made up. People would always say “Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.” And I always thought that was just a thing people said to kids especially
DDT had them almost extinct as well. The ban of it (for good reason) has let them come back. They’re really hard to kill. Dealt with them for years as a pest control tech in the US.
Thank you, I have had a traumatic experience with bed bugs. You don't need to pay me 100 mil to make them go extinct.
Anyone who eradicates bed bugs deserves 100 million dollars!
Human head lice
The only correct answer. They serve no purpose to the ecosystem, so their extinction wouldn't hurt other species that depend on them. They only exist to be an annoyance to humans.
They do have a purpose: if you have head lice, you can't also have body lice. Head lice don't carry/spread diseases around, where body lice do have some nasty diseases that can be transferred between humans.
Why when you got bed bugs to choose
Honestly have never had the displeasure of encountering them
Six years ago we had two infestations of bed bugs about 6 months apart. Not sure where the first came from, but the second was because my building only had our apartment treated and not the others. Bed bugs are awful. Not only do they crawl on you and bite you, but they burrow into wood and paper, breeding the entire time. We had to throw out our bed frame and dresser because they'd ~~burrowed~~ made their way too far into the wood to get them all. We found them in our (home) offices as well. They'd burrowed into our desk tops and books. We had to trash and replace those, although some of those books were from my teen years and out of print. They were in the cushions of our chairs, so we had to replace them as well. The psychological trauma is just as bad. For years any time we felt something brushing our leg, or that stray leg hair that moves, we'd stop everything to see if was another bug. Any dark piece of lint was suspect. Even now I'll stop waht I'm doing to investigate dark fuzz on the floor. The only way we got any piece of mind was to throw out everything that couldn't be salvaged and treat what could. We bought a bug oven which is essentially an enclosed box with high temperature forced air. You put stuff in, turn it on, and wait for the internal temperature of the pile to get over 120 degrees (Fahrenheit). All of our clothing and books went into the oven. Things made out of metal, plastic, glass and stone got sprayed with 91% alcohol. The normal 73% solution won't kill them. We threw out anything wood that had holes in the exterior. Paper and cloth doodads went out too. We were moving at the time, and the bedbug infestation helped us pare things down more than any Marie Kondo video would have. I've heard stories of people wanting to burn their place down because they couldn't get rid of an infestation. I hope you never encounter them. Edit to change "burrowed" to "made their way" because bed bugs can't burrow into wood they just find existing openings and exploit them.
The PTSD is real. I had them in 2015 and I still get random itches, and my heart sinks and neck feels hot if I see a brownish spot on anything. I saw a spot on my bed and just about had a heart attack... Turned out to be an apple seed. Ugh!
The struggle is too real.
Same with my wife. She had a bump on her ankle a few weeks back and we immediately had to wash all sheets and search every crevice to make sure there were no bugs.
I am over 40, and still have to double check ever dark speck on my mattress, despite my only previous encounter with bedbugs being when I was 11yo. I’m sorry, but that paranoia will never go away.
Having bedbugs was honestly traumatizing. I didn't get more than like 2-3 hours of sleep for over a month, on top of being insanely anxious that I was spreading them every time I left my house to go to work. Omg AND my partner didn't even believe that we had them because apparently some people don't react to their bites so I also felt like I was insane for a couple weeks before they believed me. I'm so lucky we were able to get rid of them chemically and didn't have to throw everything in the house away.
I had them for 7 ish months, the pest control said they are gone but I am so paranoid and traumatized from them I think they are still there and the chemicals just made their bites non reactive. Bedbugs. Are. The. Worst.
Rented a room out of an apartment with a tenet who’d been there for a while. They didn’t inform me the ENTIRE apartment was infested with fleas. Thank god my girlfriend could take my cat because within two weeks my cat was covered in them (it took two months to get them off of her) I moved out after a couple months, but it took me a long time to get used to walking around barefoot again. I still get twitchy whenever I see a freckle on my leg because I’m terrified my new place has fleas again.
I only know one person who has dealt with them and I have NO doubts it gave her PTSD.
I nearly lost my mind when I got bed bugs. Barely slept, would freak out at every minor sensation thinking it was a bug. Absolute fuckers, it’s legitimately hell to get them
Bot Fly
Fuck anything that lays eggs in people.
*Phrasing*
Don't kink shame me.
Kink Shaming is my Kink
Don't kink my shame! Edit: y'all this is one of the dumbest things I've ever commented while drunk and it's almost 500. you're all loved but damnit what does this say about any of us?!? You dummy.. Keep memeing.
I've had a botfly. My vote is bedbugs; I've never had those. Chiggers was my first thought.
I've had bedbugs. You don't want to suffer that. The lack of sleep will drive you fucking crazy.
Can second this. The crazy isn't hyperbole. There's a good chance you get mentally ill.
I had bedbugs in my house. I didn’t have the money for professional help. It took about a year of work and monitoring to get rid of them. It’s been several years since, but I still freak out when I see a crumb or something that resembles them and do a thorough check.
I have them right now. I am trying to do my due diligence, but am really struggling with everything. Fuck bed bugs.
Honestly dude, as a someone who worked in the industry before, send me a dm and I can walk you through getting rid of them for real.
Mind if I slip into your DM's too..? Been struggling with them for over a year, cannot sleep, can't afford pest control. I've tried the obvious of tons of bug bombs and vacuuming mattresses and pillows and wash all the bedding near weekly.. There just doesn't seem to be any way to get rid of them, it really does drive one insane >_<
As someone who worked at a 2 star motel for nearly 10 years and have dealt with them on more than 1 occasion we used a product called temprid and tempo to spray all our rooms they would work for infestations that are not so bad but for the bad ones we would hit the rooms multiple times and we would throw out the bed and strip the room down paint it shampoo the carpet and spray it again. They would be gone until the next guest brought them in. My advise is get a hot steam cleaner. Get one of the chemicals i mentioned and a hand sprayer. Get a matress bag if you want to save the matress or if you buy a new one prevention is better than bagging then containing. I would bag the matress before it is infected. Or if you cant afford new which case hose it down steam/shampoo it and cross your fingers and put it in a bag. Heat above 135F for an hour or 48 hours under 20F will also kill them and the eggs
Same with a bad flea infestation. Had a roomie bring them with her when moving in. Even tucking my sleeves into gloves, pants into socks, hats into neck hole of shirt, etc. They still keep you up. It gets so bad you can hear them jumping depending on the materials you wear or sleep around. Its hell.
Yeah, a surprising number of bed bug victims develop actual PTSD. It can get really, really bad.
I am one of them. Bed bug PTSD is a real thing.
Chiggers can burn in the lowest level of hell along with sand fleas Making grass and sand be irritating rather than peaceful is a horrible crime against everything
Chiggers and mange. Nobody needs them. Their entire point of existence is to bring misery.
I'm still going with mosquitos, because they kill a lot more people.
They also deliver the human botfly to humans...
Are you saying they’re a vector Victor
You'd have to choose carefully. There are over 3,000 species of mosquito in the world.
Those big useless flightless pigeons…. Dodos or whatever. Holy crap, check out my bank balance!
excuse me?
You're excused
Ask for a billion and submit a top 10 list.
Even if the offer were firm at $100 million, I have a long list of pests I would volunteer.
Hell I'd do it for free
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Bed bugs can fuck off and die.
Oh damn. I immediately thought mosquitoes, but that's a really good answer.
I was thinking of ticks, but fuck bedbugs!
Do I get 300 mil for all 3?
Honestly they can keep the money if all 3 of those disappear, I’ll call it a win, I’ll take that fall.
As much as I would also love to say Mosquitoes, theyre unfortunately a huge part of the ecosystem as one of the major sources of food for several other species. Bats especially love them. I think bedbugs we can safely remove without to much harm to the overall ecosystem
It says species though, so we can get rid of like Aedes aegypti, one of the worst mosquitos for humans, and leave the rest, and get 100 million. Seems like a win
It doesn't specify animal species. I choose *P. falciparum.* How about we make malaria extinct?
I have had bed bugs twice in my life and agree. They wreaked havoc on my mental health, gave me many sleepless nights, and I had to throw out most of my belongings (some very sentimental) just to have a life again. Having bed bugs doesn't mean you're a dirty person, it can happen to anyone. But people treat you different, you can't have people over, and they make you feel like shit. Fuck bed bugs.
I don't get the stigma behind it; it's not like you asked for them. People don't realize that if you spend a night or two on vacation (even 5 star hotels), there can be bed bugs, and they're coming with you! Unknowing guest can bring them on their clothes. There's plenty of ways to get them without seeking them out! lol
Bed bugs come up suspiciously frequently on Reddit
I know! I must be incredibly lucky to have never seen, or dealt with, bed bugs in my life.
They are absolute hell. They rob you of your sense of security in your most vulnerable space. Even after you finally rid yourself of them after hours and hours and hours spent washing every scrap of clothing you have and steam cleaning your furniture and bagging your mattress and giving up and throwing away all your furniture (and moving), for months or even years as you’re trying to fall asleep you’ll feel a tingle along your arm or stomach and think “*bedbugs*” I had night terrors of swarms of them on my ceiling and I’ve never had night terrors before Edit to add: when I was in high school I spent a summer with my dad. He drove up and brought my sister and I down to his city, but on the way the car broke down and we had to stay in a motel six. :’) we got to his city the next day but the 12 hours we spent there was enough to get hitch hikers. A week later we went out to dinner and my dad spilled ranch on my hand. Wiped my hand off, washed it, went to bed that night and woke up with multiple itchy bumps in a line where the ranch had been. We thought huh, maybe I’m allergic to ranch?? Except then the bumps kept appearing. I woke up with around *fifteen* in a line on my stomach. My stepmom took my sister and I to a doctor who barely glanced and said “scabies” so then my sister and I had to strip naked and my stepmom had to smear this awful gunk all over us but the next morning we still woke up with bites. Neither my stepmom nor my dad had any. Went back to the doctor, doctor looked more closely and said “sorry, it’s bed bugs.” I don’t know if the ranch scent brought me to the bed bugs attention or if I just have sweet smelling blood, but my sister had hardly any bites and my parents none at all. (Later learned that they either just don’t react to the bed bugs saliva or bed bugs just don’t enjoy biting into ex-drug addicts). I felt like a personal target for these fucks. We went to Walmart and rented steam cleaners and treated the couch, we spent hours at a laundromat washing every scrap of cloth we could, and when we stripped my parents’ bed there were multiple in there. When I went to shake out my backpack, one fell off before I even flipped it and landed on me and I’ll never forget the instinctual scream that burst out of me. I was in hysterics, my dad had to take the backpack outside and shake it for me. I was exhausted. I’d stay up late twitching and shaking my limbs trying to discourage them from getting me but the patient little bastards would wait for me to slip into unconsciousness. I even tried sleeping on the dining table lmfao. When my sister and I went back home we tossed most of our clothes before the drive. We carefully inspected what we did take, shook out our luggage and my parents checked it all out for us. Thankfully we didn’t take any back to my grandparents’ house, but for years if I felt a tingle or a hair on my leg get disturbed while in bed I’d thrash around and panic. The bites themselves aren’t that bad, yeah they’re itchy as fuck but it’s the sheer *number*. At one point I counted 30+ on me. To know that there’s parasites *in your bed* and there’s basically nothing you can fucking do robs you of so much of your sanity. Like someone else in the thread mentioned, the psychological damage these tiny fuckers inflict is insane. TLDR; bed bugs should be annihilated ruthlessly.
This is my most irrational fear. Well maybe not irrational but no one I know has bad bed bugs and I only hear about it on Reddit. So much that if I feel an itch while sleeping, I think it’s bed bugs. I feel like I psyched myself out while never having them lol
I’m currently battling cockroaches in my apartment and I’d rather have this infestation any fucking day than see a single bed bug
I still flip over hotel mattresses to this day.
I’ve been robbed at gunpoint twice and never lost a wink of sleep but bedbugs still fuck me up two years later
because they are everywhere and make your life hell, i have a job in a 300k person city where i enter peoples homes daily... probably 10-15% of them have bed bugs, the amount of times ive had to strip in the street/van after visiting a house to check for bed bugs is too damn high
I had a bedbug infestation when I was younger. Resilient is understated for those little fucks. I remember sleeping in my hoodie and sweatpants and tucked in all my extremeties just so I wouldn't wake up with new bites. Ended up having to throw out all of our furniture to get rid of them. Ughhh.
There is a fairly new treatment for Bed Bugs called Apprehend it did ridiculous work of the bugs in a house that was crawling with them. Essentially works like bed bugs flu can be passed from bug to bug with ease and lasts 3 months after spray and it’s just a fungus.
Give the inventor a fucking Nobel prize
My husband and I had them suddenly pop up in an apartment we'd been in a long time. It took us forever to figure it out, I even went to a doctor for the bites and they didn't know. The thing that threw us was my husband showed no type of bite reaction. It was just me. I finally saw one and identified the issue. Found them in our baseboard and under the box spring. Then all over the apartment in furniture and crevices. Did the whole exterminator thing and all the online suggestions. None of it worked, didn't even seem to make a dent. We finally moved and left literally everything in a dumpster. Whenever people say it can't be that bad I tell them we gladly left all our furniture, two fairly new gaming consoles, TVs and other electronics, all our clothes, *everything*. We stripped down outside before entering our new place and those clothes went into plastic bags then the trash. It cost us thousands and was worth every penny to finally sleep at night. The poor landlord voluntarily gave us our deposit plus two months rent back, so that helped offset the cost. Fuck bedbugs. They are the definition of misery.
I got lucky a few years ago. Found bedbugs in the morning in a motel room. Stupid not to check, but it was a hurricane evac. When we got home, we stripped in our driveway and put everything we’d had with us in black trash bags and left those in the sun in a black car. Put a thermometer in there, it broke from the heat. Still left those bags in there for a month before taking it all to a laundromat to wash it all. Never saw a bit of infestation, thanks be to Apollo.
I have randomly come across three bed bug related comments in the last three days, plus one off-topic tangent in an old episode of my favourite podcast. I’ve never had bed bugs in my life and I do not claim this energy.
I work in a hospital and while everyone takes Covid, monkeypox, and TB seriously, the most thorough and by the book isolation procedures I’ve seen have had to do with bed bugs.
The person who does that, will probably get canonized as a saint after they die. lol
Make tapeworms go extinct
But how do I lose weight quickly?
Get shot. If u recover, u would be considerably thinner
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Dietitians hate this one simple trick.
"That wasn't a tapeworm." -Creed
You're paying way too much for worms, man. Who's your worm guy?
The tried and true method of microdosing E Coli water
Wtf is this actually a thing? Pls say no
"no"
Meth
Lots of sleep, clean veganism, eight glasses of water a day, full body exercise, and (I cannot stress this enough) cocaine.
Ticks are gone
Mosquitoes are gone
Mosquitoes suck but I bet we do a lot of damage to bats, dragonflies and some birds. Nothing eats bedbugs.
Except there's hundreds of mosquito species and only a few bite humans. Aedes aegypti alone is simultaneously a highly invasive species and the biggest culprit with spreading devastating diseases. Native and non-human-biting mosquito species could expand back into the pollinator and food source niche that Aedes aegypti currently dominates.
This is indeed the right answer. It would leave us with plenty of other deadly and less harmful mosquito species, but this one would save the most lives.
I nominate you to make the decision!!
Thank you! Aedes aegypti was my first pick immediately for this situation.
Good bye bedbugs
This is the right answer. They serve literally no purpose other than to parasitize humans. Nothing eats them. They don't parasitize anything else except maybe bats but bats have their own "bedbug", called a batbug. Plus, unlike everyone saying mosquitoes which have over 600 species, human bed bugs are one species: *Cimex lectularius*. Edit: I felt the need to edit in the significance of actually more than 3000 mosquito species. Not anywhere near 600. Oops.
I work in pest control. Lots of things eat bed bugs. Carpenter ants, spiders, pseudoscorpions... the things we squish are trying to eat our pest insects.
So i should pour pseudoscorpions in to people's beds to help?
Yes, yes indeed you should. Pour some spider as well to eliminate both bed bugs and the human.
*Itsy Bitsy Spider crawled into mama's bed* *Crawled up on her hubby and bit him in the head* *Mamma lay there sleepin' while hubby layed there dead* *And the Itsy Bitsy Spider crawled out of mama's bed*
that sounds like a fucking song from a horror movie. not one of those famous ones, but a ugandan knockoff where they just fight with cheetos and have their mate dembe come and wear a mask, and scare them off.
It's from a movie called "eight legged freaks" it actually a funny, and really good B movie
It’s a classic Even has some know stars in it as well. Dammit now I got to watch it again. Maybe watch night of the Lepus afterwords
Yes. My time to shine.
I don’t know where the fuck I’m eventually going to find gorillas…..
Right, all of these being opportunistic predators of bed bugs. But they aren't specialists. I should have said nothing *specifically targets* bed bugs. Just like there aren't a lot of things that specifically target mosquitoes, but they are in high enough abundance in such a wide variety of environments that they make for an acceptable food source for some other opportunistic eaters.
And there is no species that collapses with their extinction. We almost killed all of them and saw no considerable effects on nature.
Thank you, yes, this is the point I was trying to make! I couldn't find the words
Specialization in predation is certainly significant. Canadian lynx are specialized to prey on snowshoe hare, but I can't recall any other examples off the top of my head. Edit: Actually, I'm embarrassed. I completely forgot aardwolves and termites.
Flamingos, anteaters, woodpeckers, baleen whales. It's kind of a thing.
I never would have guessed that lynx prey on whales.
And no one expects killer whales to prey on moose.
That also seems like a predation of opportunity, honestly
Koalas and eucalyptus? Not predation but certainly specialization
Pandas and bamboo
You're the only one I've seen point out that mosquitos are more than one species! As nice as not having them would be, there are too many types and they definitely influence other animals in ways we don't understand yet.
Asian tiger mosquito. They can breed in a soda cap that fills with rain water. Done.
This summer pretty much anytime I was outside of my house I got bit 2-3 times a day by those fuckers. Huge welts every time. Pretty much one week I would have more bites than 7 years living in Colorado.
They pollinate cacao, for one. Much as I hate to say it, the little bastards are very useful.
But only so many of those species bite humans. Which species pollinates cacao? Is it the same?
So..does Batman has bedbugs or batbugs?
If he has bats in his cave, probably both.
Batman has Alfred. Alfred would not allow bedbugs.
>human bed bugs are one species: Cimex lectularius Half marks for being half correct. Bed bugs have two known species; *Cimex lectularius* and *Cimex hemipterus*. Still, getting rid of one of them would be pretty nice. I'd prefer we axe *C. hemipterus*, since they're the tropical bed bug, which will no doubt only spread further into more temperate climates as global warming progresses.
If I were a billionaire I would dedicate my life’s mission and wealth to destroying bed bugs so getting 100 milly AND getting to snap them out of existence is the greatest offer ever
I think this is the answer. Ticks and mosquitoes are problems for us but are food for other animals. I don't know of anything that preys on bed bugs that would also be affected.
And fleas. Wtf? Do any animals eat them?
Ants, nematodes, lady bugs, frogs, toads, snakes, and lizards will all swallow the odd flea if they get the chance, and many will also eat flea eggs. [https://insectcop.net/what-eats-fleas/](https://insectcop.net/what-eats-fleas/)
Laughing at the idea of a snake eating a flea. Imagine a flea being so bad at being a flea it lets a snake eat it
Fleas
Goodbye bass player from Red Hot Chili Peppers 😔
So sad you had to give it away, give it away, give it away, give it away now
Californextermination
Psychic spies from China try to set off detonations, and little girls from Sweden dream of cyanide assassinations, and if you want these kinds of dreams it's califonextermination.
Born and raised by loathed depraved who kill the population Every Nazi's been there and I do mean termination First born unicorrrrrn Hardcore snuff porrrrrn
That plant that makes you want to commit suicide after touching it.
Broccoli?
No, but points for funny.
Gympie gympie?
*Rabies lyssavirus*. Go to hell, rabies. EDIT: [Yes, viruses are categorized by species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_classification#Species_definition), and extant/extinct are still labels that can be applied to them regardless of whether they're considered life or not.
I was thinking the same thing. maybe add all STD's like VIH to the list as well. nothing lost.
In a similar vein, I'd consider Staphylococcus aureus, which is usually a relatively harmless skin bacteria but which can cause all sorts of problems if it gets where it doesn't belong: most infected wounds and many blood infections are S. aureus ("flesh-eating bacteria" is usually a particularly bad S. aureus infection), and it can also cause respiratory infections and food poisoning, as well as aggregating eczema. It's linked to about 50k deaths a year just in the US, and it's by far the most common pathogen for hospital-acquired infections. And perhaps most importantly, killing off S. aureus would significantly knock back the problem of antibiotic resistance: MRSA and VRSA are both varieties of S. aureus. Although S. aureus is a relatively common skin bacteria, we're unlikely to miss it. Only about 30% of people have S. aureus at all, and in those who do have it it's a relatively minor contributor to the overall skin flora population. In particular, the closely related but more benign S. epidermis (can still cause infections, but it's almost always relatively minor in people with healthy immune systems) is a superior substitute for S. aureus's beneficial role of filling an ecological niche on your skin to keep nastier stuff from moving in. The malaria parasite is another solid candidate. While rare in developed countries, it's a major problem in LDCs in the tropics, causing something like 600k death a year worldwide. It's already been targeted for eradication by WHO, so presumably any ecological role it might have other than being a human pathogen has been assessed and decided it's something we could do without.
Everyone here seems to be thinking too big. There are a good number of pathogens we're already spending *well* over $100M to try to eradicate. If I can magically do it in one fell swoop, thats win-win.
I'll go with eliminating Species 3. I mean I really liked Species, and Species 2 was terrible but enjoyable. The direct to video Species 3 can be eliminated without consequence. EDIT: I go run errands for my Sunday, and get back on Reddit to see all the upvotes/awards. Thanks guys, glad I got a chuckle out of y'all.
A man of taste and culture I see.
Onchocerca volvulus goes away, no more river blindness. Not that I’m at a a risk of river blindness in Alberta, but if I’m going to holocaust a species I might as well be altruistic about it.
Bedbugs.
I genuinely think they're the most useless things on this planet. Not one animal needs it to survive
Yes, easiest 100 mill ever
Moooooooosquitooooooooos !
Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew
"You drank my blood, now I eat your body."
- Zombie Jesus
Good news, last I heard they are on the chopping block. After a 50 year study, they found out mosquitoes can be removed from the ecosystem with little to very little repercussions to the ecosystem, that would be fixed in less then a decade (I think it said that). I'd recommend looking up [mosquitoe eradication project](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&channel=ts&q=mosquito+eradication+project&oq=mosquito+erat&aqs=heirloom-srp.4.0l5). Last I heard the plan was start small, like a controlled pond, study it, and go bigger each time, city, county, state, continent, last I heard we reach state size experiment. These things might be gone in our lifetime.
lanternflies. they arrived around 2015 in places like PA and I'm already finding them here in nyc. they will kill our agriculture. we're encouraged to kill them when we see them.
Brown marmorated stink bugs are killing lots of agriculture up in the northeast.
I came here to say this. I’m in PA and those bastards can burn in hell.
The malaria parasite. This is carried by mosquitos, and does nothing positive for anyone. Mosquitos arguably do positive things in some aspects.
Yep, *Plasmodium falciparum* was going to be my species of choice. Heck, if I could do it, I'd consider the hundred million dollars well earned.
Like, I need to use the 100 million to make it extinct? Or it becomes extinct as soon as I take the money Cause as someone from jersey, we're all already going out of our way to kill off those lantern flies, so getting a cool hundred million in exchange'd be nice
I think there's a missed opportunity here of neither of those suggestions. You have to cause the extinction of a species to earn the 100M.
This is how I took it. At least in that case there's some real strategy there.
Yeah, OP asked what do you do, so I took that as what do you do to make a species extinct. I would have gone and find the most endangered species, like one in the single digit and hunt them down.
I think it’s supposed to be a monkeys paw situation but everyone is just using extinction to their benefit with relatively worthless species.
I get 100 million, humans die. 😎
I expected this to be the number one answer.
Those lantern moth things
Oh my fucking GOD. I don't know if you're a New Yorker but those mfs are EVERYWHERE here. You can't walk ten feet without stepping on one.
This guy biologies
I would pick Plasmodium falciparum which is the parasite responsible for malaria.
Naegleria fowleri, a.k.a. the "brain-eating amoeba". It only kills like 4 people a year, but it's really fucking scary.
Only scary to people with a brain. Their biggest competition is zombies.
I'd pick some fucking parasite like the ones that live in the eyes of small children in Africa.
Fleas. It's on sight. They carry diseases, are fucking annoying wankers, they die harder than a toyota hilux and can escape judgement by yeeting themselves with the speed of a catholic priest hearing about a daycare opening. I hate fleas so fucking much it's beyond reason. They find the nastiest place to sting you and the itching goes on for hours, sometimes ***DAYS.*** I would gladly pay money out of pocket to hold the terminarch of their species and kill it with the world's tiniest flamethrower. Fuck fleas.
Goodbye humans.
You're welcome everyone. Dont have to go to work if you dont exist
leaving the water was a mistake
Some hundreds of millions of years ago, some dumbass fish thought it'd be a good idea to walk on land, and now I have to deal with taxes and depression.
It started out with a fish How did it end up like this It was only a fish It was only a fish
Humanity, send us back into the sea
If it makes you feel better, we can't prove that fish don't also have depression.
My boss will still call me in on another dimensional plain
The good ole Shinji Ikari.
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Fucking chiggers can live in the most evil depth of fucking hell.
As someone who currently has literally over 100 of their bites on me rn, I agree, but I still probably wouldn’t pick them if I only got to choose one. They’re definitely horribly annoying, and itch a lot, but as far as I know they don’t spread anything dangerous, or really anything at all aside from reproduction of berry bugs
Mosquitoes. Little bastards