time to bring back DDT
they have knife dicks. Sleep tight!
Isn’t this one of those things where they suddenly evolve to gargantuan size?
Only if exposed to radiation. Although in the New York subway it wouldn’t surprise me.
Or genetic engineering by Mira Sorvino in order to stamp out “Strickler’s Disease”
I wish they would. They’d be easier to deal with if you could find them and shoot them.
People make jokes about the NYC subways being filthy and irresponsible, which they may well be, but seriously bedbugs are a nightmare. One person with one egg-laying female hidden in their clothes is enough to start a full-scale infestation anywhere, and they are really, really difficult to get rid of. They’re resistant to insecticides without direct contact, they instinctively seek out deep, narrow crevices to hide, and if you miss even one or two they can re-establish. They can live for months without feeding and they’re comfortable in temperatures above 100F and well below freezing. Because they’re tiny and hidey and not everyone reacts to their bites, they can dig in and grow a colony for months or years before anyone notices.
I had an instance when I thought I had bedbugs (a bunch of unexplained bugbites), and it really messes with you psychologically; it takes work and time and money just to confirm whether you have them or not, and while you wait you’re thinking about the hours and hours of work and hundreds and hundreds of dollars it takes to maybe eradicate a heavy infestation, unless you miss some and they pop up again a month later, and in the meantime you can’t go visiting or travel for fear of infesting your friends… 
Yeah an acquaintance had them in her home and they are very difficult to get rid of, partly because they have become very resistant to pesticides. That’s why the rule is that as soon as you get home from a trip everything goes immediately into the dryer, including the luggage. (no hard-sided bags) That level of heat is one of the few things that will still reliably kill them.
Okay, so I’m never visiting NYC.
I find this weird because their favorite hiding places are in wood and fabric crevasses very close to non moving people. A subway car, even with lots of people, seems like an abnormal habitat for them. Is it possible they are just commuting between individuals who have infestations at home?
I had bedbugs years ago, and after the initial panic I got an exterminator who just sprayed the right chemical (yes they are immune to most normal incect killers) and they went away fast. I never had to throw away any furniture or anything and thy never came back.
In a chat with a guy who ran a hotel once upon a time, he claimed the SOP when a room gets bedbugs is to strip the room and fumigate it, along with the two neighboring rooms. I imagine that’s pretty effective as hotels have an enormous interest in getting rid of the things and are likely to have figured out an effective process for doing it.
Lesson for NYC? Remove all subway cars and sterilize the tunnels!
I heard that would be ineffective because they are mostly immune to DDT these days.
This seems like an obvious reason to replace all internal fittings with seamless stainless steel fabrications and install plasma purge ducts and biological sequestration bulkheads throughout the tunnel system.
Then just add an AI with a chillingly flat affect and broad discretionary power… Absolutely nothing could go wrong.
The bedbugregistry. com blog states that we are right before bedbugs spreading out into train stations, airports, public spaces, etc. - all the places they used to be during the 19th Century. It is time to find a more efficient means of getting rid of this problem:
I went through that as well. Turned out to have most likely been rat mites, from roof rats nesting on our building.
It’s a damn thing when you’re grateful that you’ve got rat mites.
time to bring back public shaming of terrible terrible ideas
I have a solution. We genetically engineer fast breeding venomous spiders with a voracious appetite for bedbugs.
Pretty soon they’ll eat them down to a barely noticeable level, and, problem solved!
I would honestly rather have the spiders. At least they only bite when threatened.
The go-to flea treatment for cats and dogs is this stuff that you put on their skin and it makes their blood poisonous for a couple of weeks. It is awe-inspiring in action. My cat was sitting on my desk when I dosed her, and within an hour there were a dozen little black specks lying on the desk spasming themselves to death. I pushed them into a pile and watched them through a magnifying glass, like Romans at a mass execution.
Something like that for humans would be awesome. It would never get approved in a million years, of course. Might be for the best.
!!!
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
