Nobody Has Eaten a Dragon's Breath Pepper Because It Will Kill You

You may be all about the spice, but no matter how much you love trying spicy food, odds are that the new Dragon’s Breath pepper is too much heat to handle. No, that’s not a challenge. Like, don’t try this at home, because the new hottest pepper in the world could potentially be deadly. Hobby grower Mike Smith worked with Nottingham University to develop the Dragon's Breath pepper, which is currently in the midst of being confirmed as the world's spiciest by the Guinness Book of World Records. At 2.48 million Scoville heat units, the Dragon's Breath is more intense than pepper spray used in law enforcement and could burn up your airways if consumed.

The Scoville heat scale works like so: The chili is so powerfully spicy that if you had 2.48 million drops of water, and you added just one drop of Dragon's Breath's capsicum oil, you could still detect the heat. For reference, the US military’s pepper spray registers at about 2 million.

So why create such a lethal chili in the first place if it can’t be consumed? The Dragon's Breath pepper was developed to be used in medical treatment as an anesthetic, but if eaten, it could possibly cause the consumer to go into anaphylactic shock. "It's not been tried orally," Smith told the New York Daily Post. "I've tried it on the tip of my tongue and it just burned and burned. I spat it out in about 10 seconds. The heat intensity just grows... This was developed because a lot of people are allergic to [anesthetic], and this can be applied to the skin because it is so strong it numbs it.”

Yeah, so maybe don’t try to impress your friends with this one.