"I'm starting to wonder what's gonna kill me first; the Japs or the jungle."
— Thomas "Tommy" Conlin, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault
"You think monkeys, mosquitoes, and lions are bad? That's just the beginning. I've seen things you've only seen in your nightmares. Things you can't even imagine. Things you can't even see. There are things that hunt you in the night. Then something screams. Then you hear them eating, and you hope to God that you're not dessert. Afraid? You don't even know what afraid is..."
— Alan Parrish, Jumanji
"Perhaps the best way is to compare the jungle to a very beautiful woman, the pin-up dream girl in full technicolour, cool, alluring, beautiful and attractive in the heat to look at but, once approached and negotiated with, full of the greatest possibilities of danger and death to the unwary. This simile is particularly apt because, like the figure of the pin-up girl, the jungle is never flat."
— O.G.W. White, Dorsetshire Regiment
"My experience is that the length of life of the British private soldier accidentally left behind in the Malayan jungle was only a few months, while the average N.C.O., being more intelligent, might last a year or even longer. To them the jungle seemed predominantly hostile, being full of man-eating tigers, deadly fevers, venomous snakes and scorpions, natives with poisoned darts, and a host of half-imagined nameless terrors. They were unable to adapt themselves to a new way of life and a diet of rice and vegetables; in this green hell they expected to be dead within a few weeks - and as a rule they were. The other school of thought, that the jungle teems with wild animals, fowls, and fish which are simply there for the taking, and that luscious tropical fruits - paw-paw, yams, bread-fruit and all that, drop from the trees, is equally misleading. The truth is that the jungle is neutral. It provides any amount of fresh water, and unlimited cover for friend as well as foe - an armed neutrality, if you like, but neutrality nevertheless. It is the attitude of mind that determines whether you go under or survive. 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' The jungle itself is neutral."
— Freddie Spencer Chapman
Jason Brody: So, you ever go out on recons with your friends?
Agent Willis Huntley: No, no, no... There's a reason I have the American flag in here. In here, there's society, there's order. Out there? In the jungle?! The synapses in our brains go dark little by little. You forget where you're from, who you are!
Agent Willis Huntley: No, no, no... There's a reason I have the American flag in here. In here, there's society, there's order. Out there? In the jungle?! The synapses in our brains go dark little by little. You forget where you're from, who you are!
"Whoever said the jungle is neutral ain't never been where I'm from…"
— Trooper Larro, Catachan 93rd Jungle Fighters Regiment, Warhammer 40,000
In the jungle, you are always being stalked - knowing by what can mean the difference between life and death. To intruders, it is an alien landscape, a singular green hell where anything (or everything) is trying to make a meal of them.
— Warhammer: Lizardmen Book (8th edition)
I can't begin to explain what the rain forest is like. To explain it, you'd have to be a poet and a scientist and a horror writer. All I can say is how it makes you feel. You feel small. Tiny. Alone. Hopelessly weak. Afraid.
You feel heat and suffocating humidity. It's like there's not enough air. Every breath is like sucking air through a straw. You're breathing steam and perfume and the stink of dying, rotting things. The jungle is all around you. It presses against you on all sides. Wet leaves in your face; creepers that seem to reach up to trip you; sharp-edged stalks that cut you.
And then there are the twin horrors: bugs and thirst.
Mosquitoes, gnats, big flies, and other flying insects I didn't even have names for followed us in swirling clouds. They'd descend and attack, then disappear for no reason, only to attack again later. If you stopped, even for a few seconds, you could find your foot covered with ants or centipedes or beetles or bugs that defied description. And it didn't help that we were shoeless. The heat sucked every ounce of moisture out of us. It was as bad as any desert. You'd think with all the greenery there would be water everywhere. But no. The actual ground under our feet was dry. All the water is captured in the plants.
You feel heat and suffocating humidity. It's like there's not enough air. Every breath is like sucking air through a straw. You're breathing steam and perfume and the stink of dying, rotting things. The jungle is all around you. It presses against you on all sides. Wet leaves in your face; creepers that seem to reach up to trip you; sharp-edged stalks that cut you.
And then there are the twin horrors: bugs and thirst.
Mosquitoes, gnats, big flies, and other flying insects I didn't even have names for followed us in swirling clouds. They'd descend and attack, then disappear for no reason, only to attack again later. If you stopped, even for a few seconds, you could find your foot covered with ants or centipedes or beetles or bugs that defied description. And it didn't help that we were shoeless. The heat sucked every ounce of moisture out of us. It was as bad as any desert. You'd think with all the greenery there would be water everywhere. But no. The actual ground under our feet was dry. All the water is captured in the plants.
— Animorphs #11: The Forgotten
Such conditions of rain, mud, rottenness, gloom, and above all, the feeling of being shut in by the everlasting jungle and ever ascending mountains, are sufficient to fray the strongest nerves. Add to them the tension of the constant expectancy of death from behind the impenetrable screen of green, and nerves must be of the strongest, and morale of the highest, to live down these conditions.
— Report on operations in New Guinea, 3rd Australian Division
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa! What, y-you think this is some sort of tropical getaway?! You can't protect your mate, mate."
— Buck after Manny declares he and the group are going to move on into the Jungle of Misery, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
The jungle is a fearful place
To members of the human race
Who happen to be passing through
And are not sure of what to do
For jungles, and with bated breath
Are full of thoughts of sudden death
Beneath the paws and jaws and claws
Of terrifying carnivores
To members of the human race
Who happen to be passing through
And are not sure of what to do
For jungles, and with bated breath
Are full of thoughts of sudden death
Beneath the paws and jaws and claws
Of terrifying carnivores
— Dick King Smith
"Here we are at the edge of the world of human history! Things like this happen all the time in the jungle; it's survival of the fittest! In the jungle, it's the daily violence of the strong overcoming the weak!"
— Alan Yates, Cannibal Holocaust
Rarity had by now her breath enough to ask questions, even if she wasn't ready to get up off the deck quite yet. "Just what are the Impenetrable Lands?"
"A vast, seemingly endless jungle," Fancypants answered. "Some ponies call it the dark heart of the world. Many great rivers and streams flow into and out of that jungle, like so many veins and arteries, but nopony has ever gotten far exploring them. Some say there are hostile natives, and others claim that the forest is haunted. Whatever the case may be, the Impenetrable Lands are as alien and uncontrollable as the Everfree Forest near Ponyville, but on a much larger scale."
"A vast, seemingly endless jungle," Fancypants answered. "Some ponies call it the dark heart of the world. Many great rivers and streams flow into and out of that jungle, like so many veins and arteries, but nopony has ever gotten far exploring them. Some say there are hostile natives, and others claim that the forest is haunted. Whatever the case may be, the Impenetrable Lands are as alien and uncontrollable as the Everfree Forest near Ponyville, but on a much larger scale."
— The Flight of the Alicorn: Chapter IX: Fallout
It's been said that the 501st got the best of the war. We also got the worst. On Felucia, the Seps dug their metal heels into the muck of that alien hellhole and dared the Republic to come in after them. So we did, only to be met with month after month of flesh-eating diseases, shrieking nocturnal predators, and other sights that haunt me to this day.
— 501st Journal, "Battle of Felucia: Heart of Darkness"
