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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

Spend a summer up in the Yukon or Alaska if you want to see solid walls of ravenous mosquitoes.

I get bitten while riding my bike, bitten while my arm is out of the car window driving at 30km/h, and bitten through jeans. 100% DEET (you can get it in Alaska) does the trick for about 30 minutes before you have to re-apply - and it's nasty stuff.

This past weekend I was camping at a music festival and slapped my arm casually, and killed 14 mosquitoes with the one slap.....

A fan? That will do nothing.

The mosquitoes will mostly be gone in another month, then it's No CM and black fly season, until it gets below freezing in ~September.

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I agree. I don't think the author has been to India. I lived in Hyderabad, and the mosquito's there were super fast and super aggressive. Fans? Hah.

Before sleeping, I'd close all the windows and doors and spray the toxic anti-mosquito product. After half an hour, I'd go in and find all the fallen mosquito's and squish them, since they weren't actually dead, just stunned. After a while they would just get up and fly away if I didn't do anything. Then, I'd use an electric zapper to find the remaining ones which were unaffected by the spray. Then, before sleeping I'd light a mosquito repellent, and also apply a mosquito repellent to my hands and feet to keep them away.

Only the above regimen worked. Skipping any of the above meant I'd be slapping away angry buzzing mosquito's the rest of the night.

Fans wouldn't do jack to slow them down. The only other thing which was semi-effective was cooling down the room with an AC. They seemed to get a bit slow then.

You just need a bigger fan. Downside would be noise of the fan and wind of a constant mini-hurricane :)

Seconded. From Pakistan. Fans mean nothing to these mosquitoes. The only thing that works is physically zapping them.

Wow, this is not something I knew about Alaska. I did a simple google image search for 'Alaska mosquitoes' and that is plain scary.

Not living North enough ;)

This is mostly a problem further South and West in Alaska. The higher up you go, the colder it is to the point you don't get that many insects at all.

The mosquitoes are pretty rough up on the north slope. They're even worse than the Anchorage area (and bigger, too). Anywhere there's lots of standing fresh water, you'll have mosquitoes in the summer in Alaska.

The wind does make a huge difference though. If it's windy, there's more or less no problem. It's when the wind lies down that they come out in force.

The mosquitoes are bad enough that blood loss due to insect bites is a major contributing factor to caribou calf mortality, believe it or not. The caribou actually seek out drilling pads because they're elevated (~10 feet) enough to catch a breeze and get "out of the swamp", which helps keep the mosquitoes down. Thus the pictures you'll often see (yay, PR spin) of caribou swarming oil production facilities on the north slope.

Anchorage is south.

Yes. That's what I was saying. The mosquitoes can be even worse in the extreme north of Alaska than they are in southeast Alaska.

Ah, gotcha, the wording just made it seem like you were saying : "The north is bad, Anchorage, for example...ect."

sorry.

> The higher up you go, the colder it is to the point you don't get that many insects at all.

My experience doesn't completely agree with that.

Everything up to and including the Brooks Range was horrendous for mosquitoes in summer, same over on the Dempster Highway in Canada. Once you get within ~60 miles of the Arctic Ocean the temperature does drop enough to get rid of them, but before that it's a nightmare.

Or south enough. Bonus is that in south you'll also get denque, yellow fever and malaria from bites.

I only know this from reading Hatchet (which is about Canada, but Alaska is basically the same)

> 100% DEET (you can get it in Alaska) does the trick for about 30 minutes before you have to re-apply

July evening mosquitoes in Western Siberia tundra plains land onto and bite even freshly DEET-ed skin :)

> black fly season

1cm long - nah, 2 cm long - painful, yet usually can't get through clothes, 3 cm long - get you even through clothes like jeans, really painful and blood doesn't clot oozing through a 3mm razor cut.

In Sweden, they use helicopters to bomb the mosquitoes with the pesticide Vectobac G.

http://www.thelocal.se/40512/20120427/

It is a shame that one of safest and most effective pesticides used to control mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects, DDT, is no longer permitted in most countries.

Citations?

I'm absolutely not an expert but I was under the general impression that DDT is no longer permitted because it's not safe.

That's correct, and moreover, DDT is not even banned if used for things like stopping disease-carrying mosquitos. The Stockholm Convention explicitly allows for that use[1].

This is usually brought up as a weird rallying point for people with an ax to grind with Silent Spring, nevermind the very real effects of DDT and nevermind the exemptions explicitly dealing with the objections raised.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Restrictions_on_usage

Long article about the invention of DDT and it'sssubsequent use and misuse. http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_07_02_a_ddt.htm

According to Wikipedia though, DDT only played a minor role in eliminating Malaria from the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Use_in_the_1940s_and_1950s

why is it banned if it's one of the safest?

From what I recall reading on earlier HN threads mentioning DDT, it was linked to reproductive harm in birds (softer/weaker shells), and insects started building up a resistance anyway.

Is No CM a specific choice? I've always used no-see-ums.

I'm an Australian living in Canada.... I'm not good with "local" words and references... I have seen it written both ways though.

> A fan? That will do nothing.

Have you tried it though? Seems like you're dismissing it out of hand.

edit: and having read the rest of the comments it seems like fans are widely used in India in Vietnam to combat mosquitoes.

I remember going to Denali in high school and the mosquitoes you have up there in Alaska shouldn't even considered in the same genus as the mosquitos most people deal with.

You also get mosquito bitten in the Outer Banks in a 20 mph wind off the ocean. Not sure about this NYT piece.

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