This Pepper is So Hot It Could Kill Some People … And Save Others

A Welsh horticulturist has bread a variety of pepper so hot that it could cause a life-threatening anaphylactic shock if consumed. It’s also so hot that it could be used as an anesthetic to people allergic to traditional medicine. Because nature is tricky.

Related: The 10 Hottest Peppers in the World

The pepper is called the Dragon Breath Chili and it measures 2.48m on the Scoville scale (a jalapeno pepper measures between 2,500 and 10,000 on the Scoville scale) and it’s considerably hotter than the previous record holder, the Carolina Reaper (which measures 2.2m heat units).

The horticulturist and flower shop owner who bred it, Mike Smith, said no one has tried it orally and he “tried it on the tip of my tongue and it just burned and burned. I spat it out in about 10 seconds.”

Smith created the pepper in partnership with Nottingham Trent University and said it was developed with anesthesia in mind – the pepper is so strong, it numbs skin, making it an organic replacement for synthetic drugs. 

No official word yet from the Guinness Book of World Records confirming the record breaking heat but we’re excited to see the creativity (and old school approach) to solving real world problems.