the "one step" and "two step" thing is BS......15 minutes is realistically in normal conditions how quick the fastest acting venom will likely kill a healthy adult male....
Pete is right, the sea snakes have the fastest acting venom and if you think about it that makes sense....they got to paralyze the fish NOW! in a 3D environment like the water...
on land its the fierce snake(inland taipan) of the Australian Outback but it rarely kills anyone in nature cause it lives in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.....the run of the mill Asian cobra and Russel's viper kill more ppl than any other...both have fairly toxic venom but nothing spectacular, we have a couple rattlesnakes that are worse....however they live in densely populated areas with poor medical care by western standards so by a quirk of geography and economics they whipe out more ppl each year just due to the fact they bite more ppl than any other species...
in Africa Egyptian cobras, saw-scaled vipers(lil bitty viper rarely more than 18 inches long) and the puff adder kill the most...
in the US the eastern and western diamondbacks kill the most....due to their large size and the fact they have large ranges....our lil prairie rattler has more toxic venom than the western diamond back but because its smaller and tends to inject less venom in a bite and the fact its range mainly includes pretty rural country with fewer ppl than the other two, it kills very few ppl...
A serious student of the "Armchair Safari" always looking for Africa/Asia hunting books
