10 Toxins So Deadly You Can’t Have Even Just a Little, To Try It
There are plenty of things in this world you really shouldn’t touch, and especially eat, if you value your health. In some cases, though, if the intrusive thoughts take the wheel, you’ll probably just have to get your stomach pumped. For other toxins, even a tiny amount is enough to book you an immediate cruise ticket on the River Styx.
Here are some of the deadliest toxins known to man. This is based on their LD50, or the amount at which the mortality rate of anyone affected is a good old-fashioned coin flip. The amount needed is listed by milligrams per kilogram of body weight.
Strychnine: 1-2 mg/kg
To give you an idea of the kind of toxic we’re working with here, one of the least potent is good old strychnine, which was best known as rat poison, until it was mostly phased out because it was both too dangerous to other animals and considered too inhumane for even rats. The natural source comes from a plant known as Strychnos nux-vomica, which definitely doesn't sound like something you should be garnishing a salad with.
Strychnine shuts down your body’s ability to send nerve signals to any of your muscles, including the ones that do stuff like, well, breathing.
Aconitine: 1-2 mg/kg
Aconitine has roots in ancient poisoning older than strychnine. It comes from plants in the genus Aconitum, which medieval history and fantasy buffs alike might know as monkshood or wolfsbane. Aconitine goes to work on both the heart and the nervous system, two things in your body that you really need to work.
Cantharadin: .5 mg/kg
This metal little fellow is the blister beetle, and he’s packing a serious toxic punch in the form of cantharidin. Not only is cantharidin highly toxic and likely fatal if ingested, it’s going to hurt the whole way down. On skin (or, say, the inside of the throat), it causes extremely painful blistering, hence the name.
Amatoxin: .1 mg/kg
You don’t get a name like “deathcap mushroom” without being able to back it up. A selection of mushrooms are decidedly bad eats, and fully capable of poisoning you, but Amatoxin is far and away the worst snack, responsible for 95 percent of deaths from mushroom poisoning. And it’s capable of absolutely pulping your liver, even if you do survive. But sure, keep trusting a phone app for your weird foraging hobby.
Dimethylmercury: .05 mg/kg
Dimethylmercury is uniquely terrifying because, though the other entries here usually have to be ingested, injected or similar to be dangerous, 50 micrograms of dimethylmercury is fully capable of killing you simply on contact with your skin. The scientific world learned the hard way that even they weren’t taking dimethyl mercury seriously enough when chemist Karen Wetterhahn was killed by just a couple drops through her gloves.
Tetrodotoxin: .008 mg/kg
The blue-ringed octopus is cuter than it has any right to be, considering what it’s capable of doing to you. It’s packed with tetrodotoxin, which, in very small amounts, is capable of dismissing you from this mortal coil. One second, you’re petting an awesome-looking little guy on a scuba dive, and the next? Your respiratory tract is paralyzed, and you’re regretting not speaking to an estate lawyer sooner.
Batrachotoxin: .002-.007 mg/kg
Speaking of creatures both deadly and adorable, you’ve probably heard of poison dart frogs. Aesthetically, they’re some of the coolest animals out there. You could pop that pattern straight on a runway and be done for the day — which is a much better way to appreciate the coloration, far away from the actual frog and its stores of batrachotoxin. Each frog’s sitting on enough to kill 10 humans, and to do it in less than 10 minutes. You could get the antidote, but that’s extremely difficult due to the fact that it doesn’t exist.
Saxitoxin: .0006 mg/kg
In case you ever start feeling high and mighty as an organism on this earth, remember saxitoxin. It’s one of the most potent poisons on earth, over 1,000 times more potent than cyanide. Where does it come from? Tiny little plankton. SpongeBob truly doesn’t know who he’s messing with. It poses more of a possible threat than you’d think due to the fact it can be absorbed by shellfish, which then act as a lovely salty delivery mechanism into the human body, where it causes something called paralytic shellfish poisoning, which is exactly as unpleasant as it sounds.
Polonium-210: .00001 mg/kg
High levels of radiation are something you absolutely want to minimize having near, much less inside your body. Unfortunately, the entire world witnessed just what a bit of Polonium-210 can do to a person when it made international news as the tool used to murder Russian journalist Alexander Litvinenko. It’s not just highly toxic, but brutal in its symptoms, and there’s likely other entries on the list you’d much rather down if given the choice.
Botulinum toxin: .000001 mg/kg
Yes, as in Botox. A common refrain in the world of science is “the dose makes the poison,” meaning that almost anything can kill you, the question is how much it takes. In the case of botulinum toxin, it pretty much holds the crown for volumetric efficiency. So how in the world is it something that people are allowed to inject into their own bodies?
Commercial Botox is, almost overwhelmingly and entirely, simple saline solution, that exists to dilute the infinitesimally small amount of botulinum toxin included. For example, in a 100-unit vial of Botox, there’s only roughly three-quarters of a nanogram (meaning one millionth of a milligram) of botulinum toxin. Which is a good thing, because what’s one thing people want less than wrinkles? Full-blown botulism.
