Article created by: Mantas Kačerauskas
It’s interesting to think that work is a necessity in life and it’s all kinds of annoying and dreadful. Now, food, on the other hand, is also a necessity, but definitely in the top 5 of the best things that life has to offer. Until either reality or the internet hits.
Yes, Reddit has recently been ruining food (but only a little bit) with folks sharing how much of something consumed is lethal. We’re talking about actual foods that, if consumed in excess, would be a lethal dose. Some of these are physically impossible to achieve (no, don’t accept this challenge), but others—let’s just say it’s good to know these things if you really like eating.
When you drive on a highway and there's oncoming trafic in the other lane, you're always just one tiny hand motion (yours or the other driver) away from death.
When you think about it, it's insane that we trust each other to drive fast in opposite directions separated by just a few feet.
A few years back a person got hospitalized because they ate 412 chicken nuggets in one sitting, and of course the top comments were all to the effect of "so 411 is the limit"
You’ll die faster without sleep than without food
Nutmeg in large-but-not-nearly-as-large-as-you-might-think doses is a potent psychoactive that will basically make you go insane. Infamous addict William S. Burroughs wrote that the only people he ever met whom he thought were truly beyond redemption were the nutmeg addicts.
You would die from smoke inhalation before you could overdose on THC from smoking pot.
One of my favorite trombone fun facts is that within a human lifetime, you’ll eat about a trombone’s worth of Zinc and Copper (the metals that make brass). I had a kid once ask me “so if I eat a trombone right now, will I never have to eat zinc or copper again?” And the answer was yes, because you would die. Edit: okay I checked a source for how many minerals we actually need in a human lifetime, and turns out my original source was way wrong. We apparently eat 950 lbs of copper and 502 lbs of zinc in a lifetime, so considering that a large trombone of 6 lbs provides roughly 4 lbs of copper and 2 lbs of zinc, that works out to around 250 large trombones or 500 small trombones eaten in a human lifetime. But you would still die if you ate an entire trombone in one sitting.
Ointments with methyl salicylate like IcyHot and Tiger Balm can harm you if you use it over 40% of your body.
A teen died some years back after using a few types of muscle balms and adhesive pads at the same time.
Brazil nuts and selenium poisoning, don't eat em every day, or in consistent large quantities.
I remember a news story a couple of years ago where some guy died because he would eat 2 bags of black licorice every day.
You can go and buy a bottle of Tylenol at damn-near any grocery store, gas station, or pharmacy with 500mg capsules/tablets.
It is entirely possible to irreparably damage your liver and kidneys with as little as 7500mg... so 15 pills in a single day. Sure, this number generally requires other comorbidities to be present - chronic alcoholism, poor nutrition, etc - but losing track of how many you've taken is reasonably common (all things considered, especially for individuals in mental decline), making acute acetaminophen poisoning one of the leading causes of acute liver failure leading to death.
It is really not a fun way to go, either...
Consuming just six teaspoons of cinnamon powder in one sitting can potentially lead to death by cinnamon challenge gone horribly wrong
It only takes 7mL of hydrofluoric acid to absorb all the free calcium in the body of an adult human.
Source - I work with HF and we have very extensive safety training and routine tabletop drills to cover what to do in case of an exposure. Calcium gluconate can save lives.
Milk contain small amounts of alcohol. If you quickly drink 13 litres, you can blow positive in a breathalyser test (about 0.1 promille). You will have burst your stomach before that though, and probably drowned your brain.
Amanita phalloides, also known as the Death Cap mushroom. 0.1mg/kg of body weight of it's toxins is all it takes to be lethal. One mushroom typically contains about 15mg. The biggest danger is these look like mushrooms that are also perfectly edible.
Another set of lookalike mushrooms are Galerina marginata and Pholiotina rugosa which are often mistaken for "magic mushrooms" (Psilocybe)
If you drink two liters of soy sauce you will die.
You can die from alcohol poisoning by drinking vanilla extract.
A cigar is supposed to have enough nicotine for up to 8 fatal doses. You would probably have to extract the nicotine and administer it orally for this because smoking destroys a lot of it.
