Have you ever heard of the Scoville Scale? No? Then let us enlighten you.
Basically, the Scoville Scale is to spiciness what the Richter Scale is to earthquakes.
But unlike the Richter Scale where the strength amplifies to the power of ten with each number - so a 5.0 earthquake is ten times more powerful than a 4.0 - the Scoville Scale doesn't make it super easy to understand, with different spicy levels assigned in hundreds, thousands, and millions.
So for example, your regular old bell pepper gets a straight up zero, but that jumps to between 100 and 1,000 for paprika, between 3,500 and 10,000 for a jalapeno, between 30,000 and 50,000 for tabasco, and between 100,000 and 350,000 for a habanero. (Frank's Red Hot Sauce only gets about 400 on the scale, FYI.)
The previous spiciest chilli was the Carolina Reaper, which scored a 1.5 million on the Scoville Scale, and here's some people attempting to eat one:
https://youtu.be/1X9d_n-cMB4
Clip via David Dobrik Too
Clever.
Anyways, it took the work of some folk at an actual university to come up with something more powerful - because developing a spicier chilli is basically like creating a new weapon of mass destruction - and the folk at Nottingham Trent University have created the Dragon's Breath chilli, which has a Scale score of 2.48 million, almost a full million more than the previous record holder.
The guy who created it told the
BBC that he is in no rush to try it himself, but that someone took a small nibble of one, didn't swallow it, but still found their mouth was numb for two days straight.
So, essentially, swallowing a full one could result in sudden and massive anaphylactic shock and then... that's all folks.
All in all, don't put this with your nachos. It won't end well. For anyone.
https://twitter.com/BBCWalesNews/status/864829502375043072
