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scovilles Dragon's breath...2.48m scovilles?
- Thread starter BSH
- Start date
Greenguru said:
Sure, there are lotsa pix....................
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Oh...I'm sure it's a real pepper of some sort, I just don't know that it is 'for real'. They should send us all several for testing purposes. 
Did you know a potato is another example of a hyper-dangerous plant which can cause deadly anaphylactic shock? Pretty much all foods can kill you if you have an acute enough allergy.
Allergy Protip: If you or someone you love are allergic to anything to an extreme degree but not enough of a degree to pack an Epi-Pen, keep a few diphenhydramine (Benadryl, etc) capsules handy at all times to slow the histamine dump caused by unintended heavy exposure. Chewing an antihistamine up and getting it into your system quickly when a reaction starts can be the difference in making it to the hospital or not. Make sure someone tells attending EMT/physicians what you took and how much was taken. I personally keep a bottle of antihistamines handy in my glove box or my bag just in case someone ELSE around me is allergic to something and needs immediate treatment. Have legitimately saved lives in insect sting cases.
To ease your mind; if deadly cap allergies were really 'a thing', then pepper spray would not be civilian legal and a standard issue to every single law enforcement officer in huge swaths of the world. We're talking about inhaling large quantities of an aerosol cap that is base strength of 2-3 million SHU and goes directly into your bloodstream via mucus membranes. The few documented cases I have read where that has appeared to kill someone, it was not deemed to be the actual cause of death. The person generally died due to complications from an unknown medical condition or the fact that they were already stoned out of their head on some illicit substance. (Study on 26 pepper-spray deaths in California revealed that 19 of those people also had cocaine, meth, or another heavy illegal stimulant present in their blood at toxic levels at time of death. The others died of asthma complications or such, though the actual cause of death for all could arguably be listed as 'doing something that would give police an excuse to pepper spray your dumb ass'.)
A deadly serious cap allergy is such a rarity that I've only even heard of one legitimate case, and it was pretty much a dude with a serious allergy who killed himself eating piles of his allergic food in a food competition with his brother-in-law. He died from an allergic reaction either before help could be administered or because he didn't take the initial hives reaction seriously enough. (England, there was a scientific paper on it but I cannot remember the year.)
But yeah, food allergies are a thing to be taken seriously. The good news is that if you have an allergy, it should become very apparent even when eating far less spicy foods.
lionbeat said:
Did you know a potato is another example of a hyper-dangerous plant which can cause deadly anaphylactic shock? Pretty much all foods can kill you if you have an acute enough allergy.
Allergy Protip: If you or someone you love are allergic to anything to an extreme degree but not enough of a degree to pack an Epi-Pen, keep a few diphenhydramine (Benadryl, etc) capsules handy at all times to slow the histamine dump caused by unintended heavy exposure. Chewing an antihistamine up and getting it into your system quickly when a reaction starts can be the difference in making it to the hospital or not. Make sure someone tells attending EMT/physicians what you took and how much was taken. I personally keep a bottle of antihistamines handy in my glove box or my bag just in case someone ELSE around me is allergic to something and needs immediate treatment. Have legitimately saved lives in insect sting cases.
To ease your mind; if deadly cap allergies were really 'a thing', then pepper spray would not be civilian legal and a standard issue to every single law enforcement officer in huge swaths of the world. We're talking about inhaling large quantities of an aerosol cap that is base strength of 2-3 million SHU and goes directly into your bloodstream via mucus membranes. The few documented cases I have read where that has appeared to kill someone, it was not deemed to be the actual cause of death. The person generally died due to complications from an unknown medical condition or the fact that they were already stoned out of their head on some illicit substance. (Study on 26 pepper-spray deaths in California revealed that 19 of those people also had cocaine, meth, or another heavy illegal stimulant present in their blood at toxic levels at time of death. The others died of asthma complications or such, though the actual cause of death for all could arguably be listed as 'doing something that would give police an excuse to pepper spray your dumb ass'.)
A deadly serious cap allergy is such a rarity that I've only even heard of one legitimate case, and it was pretty much a dude with a serious allergy who killed himself eating piles of his allergic food in a food competition with his brother-in-law. He died from an allergic reaction either before help could be administered or because he didn't take the initial hives reaction seriously enough. (England, there was a scientific paper on it but I cannot remember the year.)
But yeah, food allergies are a thing to be taken seriously. The good news is that if you have an allergy, it should become very apparent even when eating far less spicy foods.
Well....lionbeat said:
I did some back of envelop calculations, using the following data:
- SHU of Carolina Reaper is avg. at 1.6 million
- this is equivalent of 100 000 ASTAGES pungency units
-which gives Carolina Reaper a 1 part in 10 capsaicin rating.
(Keep in mind this is all from dry weight)
-the LD50 of capsaicin is predicted to be between 0.5g and 5g per kg
-the average body weight is 62kg.
-this means that 31g to 310g of capsaicin would kill 50% of people.
-As Carolina Reaper is 1 part in 10 capsaicin, you would need 310g to 3100g of Carolina Reaper chillies to kill a person.
-This averages out at 1.7kg. Note that this is dry weight.
So apparently 1.7kg of Reaper powder would kill average people.
Personally, I'd think that you'd need a lot less.
But the question was what SHU would be deadly, but what matters is the dosage. For example, you'd need a heck of a lot of bell peppers (SHU <1) to kill someone. Or you could use 1.7kg of reaper powder (1.6 million SHU) or 170g pure capsaicin (16million SHU). Or, if you really wanted to, you could use, resinifertoxin, the highest intensity known to man, at 16 000 000 000 SHU, 1000x higher than capsaicin. If you used that, you'd only need 0.17g.
But let's keep it realistic. An average pepper is 25g, but you need 31g of capsaicin to kill the average person. And most chillies are only less than 5% capsaicin. So you'd be pushing it to kill a person with only one pod. Let's see, 25g pod would be about 1.25g capsaicin, so you'd need about 25 pods to kill. That's a fair bit.
Now, all those calculations are no doubt way off the mark, but they aren't meant to be accurate. They're just meant to give a very, very rough idea, and convey the point. What's the point?
-No particular SHU will kill; what matters is the dosage. The higher the SHU, the lower the dosage required.
- You need quite a lot of chillies to kill. Like seriously, a lot.
Hope you all enjoyed my raving!
Everything is a poison, what depends is the dosage...spicefreak said:
But nah, I wasn't really suggesting that we add RFT to peppers, just posing it as a hypothetical dystopian future...
He claims to be working with a university there, and when he makes his SHU claim he holds up his cellphone which has a picture of what looks like a printout. I believe that he sent samples from 10 or so peppers that were each tested individually (rather than the 3 pepper bulk that Guinness uses) and a few of them topped above the Reaper, so some journalists thought they had a story about the new "world's hottest." ~groan~
No matter what you think about the Guinness test, or random HPLC -> SHU conversions for individual peppers grown in your nasty basement, I think we can all agree its about time for another replicated field trial out in New Mexico or somewhere. It's been too long since Bosland et al 2012 http://horttech.ashspublications.org/content/22/4/534.full.pdf
No matter what you think about the Guinness test, or random HPLC -> SHU conversions for individual peppers grown in your nasty basement, I think we can all agree its about time for another replicated field trial out in New Mexico or somewhere. It's been too long since Bosland et al 2012 http://horttech.ashspublications.org/content/22/4/534.full.pdf
The pics shows posted by The_NorthEast_ChileMan shows its a tiny pepper.
Does anyone have a link to the creator's facebook or website? I can find Chili Bob on facebook, but think that is the promoter or some thing. Like Mr. Curry invented the Carolina Reaper but it was promoted by Pepper Joe sort of thing. I get the feeling the creator is a really nice guy who grows flowers and trees as a hobby. Willing to be this thing has some beautiful flowers.
AJ Drew said:
Gutta give credit where credit is due AJ! I found this,> Superhot 'Dragon's Breath' Chili Pepper Can Kill. Here's How which leads to> Tom Smith PLANTS.
dennish said:
First off Dennish, I'm not maligning your post, I'm pointing out how these things spiral out of control so the different news agencies can pump-up the issue to increase sales/viewing even if unsubstantiated.> Dragon's Breath Variety Debuts as The Hottest Pepper.
Dubbed “Dragon’s Breath” by its creator, Chef Mike Smith, this chili pepper has been christened as the world’s hottest pepper with an official nod from the Guinness Book of Records.
So let's see, now Mr. Smith is a Chef (See my post #32 above, that is the gentleman in question at Tom Smith Plants?), the plant has been "christened as the world's hottest pepper" and has "an official nod from the Guinness Book of Records"? Really? Gimme a break!
And here's the picture Gorizza refers to in Post #26 above...
`YMMV
There's at least two different varieties in this pic for sure. There's the smallish orange pod that looks like some sort of orange habanero, and then there's the larger, typical Chinense looking pod with the red, pimply skin and a 7 pot kinda look. Point being, the fact that they seem so completely different would seem to show that his new variety, if these are in fact all pods of this variety, is nowhere near stable or reliable enough to be considered a proper variety.dennish said:Here is a pic the 'creator' posted on FB of mature pods
Edit: Orange pod is in middle of bottom half. Red pod is in bottom left of the upper right quadrant, or above and to the right of the middle.
ThatBlondGuy101 said:
It looks like there's a pretty good chance this guy has no idea what he's doing. Didn't somebody quote him saying "guinness is looking at the DNA now so they can give me the prize without testing it"
what a bunch of bologna.
...But we're all going to look pretty stupid when it comes out that this guy has been breeding this thing in secret for 5 years and is totally ready for a guinness run.
It's why neither the Appocalypse Scorpion nor the Jigsaw have seen ratings yet, despite being around for a while. There's little point when only the ratings from this year's grow onwards will count.
Rumbl said:
Somebody at LifeHacker did all the math on how much of what peppers it would take to kill you based on the LD50 of capsaicin in lab rats. He'res the article, I'll quote it below
Pure capsaicin registers a staggering 16 million SHUs. Scientists can convert between the amount of capsaicin per gram of dried chilli and SHUs; the Dragon's Breath's 2.48 million SHUs translates to 0.155g of capsaicin per gram of dried chilli. Since chillies are approximately 85 per cent water, that means there are 0.023g of capsaicin per gram of fresh Dragon's Breath.
Read more at https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/05/meet-dragons-breath-the-worlds-new-hottest-chilli/#b8KrB4sHsUE3Jf2R.99
So, to consume the minimum lethal dose of 5.8g of capsaicin, you'd have to eat nearly 250g of chilli. For an habanero-sized chilli, which look twice as large as the fruits Smith created, that would be about 25-30 chillies.
Realistically, it's probably impossible to breed a chilli so spicy that just one could kill you with its heat. That's because if we assume a chilli is around 10g in size (habanero to jalapeño-sized), more than half of its tissues by weight would have to be capsaicin — which doesn't leave a lot of room for the chilli's structural parts, let alone water (a Dragon's Breath chilli is approximately 2.3 per cent capsaicin). You could potentially create a lethal single chilli if you bred one that is far larger and much hotter at the same time. A strain twice as hot as a Dragon's Breath at the size of a capsicum would theoretically do it, but is not likely biologically feasible.
What do yall think?