<story><title>The World&apos;s Deadliest Thing</title><url>https://www.the-angry-chef.com/blog/the-worlds-deadliest-thing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sho</author><text>&amp;gt; The lethal dose when consumed orally is around 30 billionths of a gram, which if you want a relatable comparison, is about the same as if you cut a single poppy seed into ten thousand equal pieces and ate one of them. It is an amount so tiny, it really doesn’t make sense.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s right - it makes no sense. How could such a small amount of anything do enough damage to shut down your entire body? According to wikipedia, it works by &amp;quot;cleaving key proteins required for nerve activation&amp;quot;. Unless there&amp;#x27;s some self-replication mechanism, how does that even work?&lt;p&gt;edit: I went and did the math. At an LD of 30 nanograms, that&amp;#x27;s about 1.2 billion actual molecules of this stuff to die. I guess that&amp;#x27;s enough to shut down a sufficient number of nerves that you just can&amp;#x27;t function anymore.&lt;p&gt;The math: lethal dose &amp;#x2F; per molecule weight (molar mass &amp;#x2F; avogadro)&lt;p&gt;(3.0e-10) &amp;#x2F; (149323.05 &amp;#x2F; 6.0221409e+23) = 1209888406.377984</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a protease which matches key neural proteins. The key to recognise is that it&amp;#x27;s reusable: one molecule can keep breaking proteins, and as soon as it does that faster than homeostatic processes can replace them you&amp;#x27;re in trouble.&lt;p&gt;Just how &amp;quot;rm -rf &amp;#x2F;&amp;quot; can destroy your whole system: it&amp;#x27;s a small character but it matches and destroys everything.</text></comment>
<story><title>The World&apos;s Deadliest Thing</title><url>https://www.the-angry-chef.com/blog/the-worlds-deadliest-thing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sho</author><text>&amp;gt; The lethal dose when consumed orally is around 30 billionths of a gram, which if you want a relatable comparison, is about the same as if you cut a single poppy seed into ten thousand equal pieces and ate one of them. It is an amount so tiny, it really doesn’t make sense.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s right - it makes no sense. How could such a small amount of anything do enough damage to shut down your entire body? According to wikipedia, it works by &amp;quot;cleaving key proteins required for nerve activation&amp;quot;. Unless there&amp;#x27;s some self-replication mechanism, how does that even work?&lt;p&gt;edit: I went and did the math. At an LD of 30 nanograms, that&amp;#x27;s about 1.2 billion actual molecules of this stuff to die. I guess that&amp;#x27;s enough to shut down a sufficient number of nerves that you just can&amp;#x27;t function anymore.&lt;p&gt;The math: lethal dose &amp;#x2F; per molecule weight (molar mass &amp;#x2F; avogadro)&lt;p&gt;(3.0e-10) &amp;#x2F; (149323.05 &amp;#x2F; 6.0221409e+23) = 1209888406.377984</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tasty_freeze</author><text>Wikipedia says &amp;quot;The estimated human lethal dose of type A toxin is 1.3–2.1 ng&amp;#x2F;kg intravenously or intramuscularly, 10–13 ng&amp;#x2F;kg when inhaled, or 1000 ng&amp;#x2F;kg when taken by mouth.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Botulinum_toxin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Botulinum_toxin&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>