<story><title>Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’</title><url>https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/russia-scientist-mushroom-poison/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chongli</author><text>How many millions of people go mushroom hunting?</text></item><item><author>scotty79</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s like few cases per season per million people eating wild shrooms.</text></item><item><author>hunson_abadeer</author><text>It is not common at all. You have maybe several people dying every year, which is in the &amp;quot;hit by lightning&amp;quot; territory. It&amp;#x27;s very well-publicized whenever it happens, which probably helps keep the numbers low. But this is a &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; unusual way to die.</text></item><item><author>renegade-otter</author><text>This is not really suspicious. I regularly went foraging for shrooms in Ukraine with my gram gram, but I was not allowed to pick anything, of course. It requires expertise.&lt;p&gt;In that part of the world, this is very common, and so are the cases of people poisoning themselves because they think they are good at it.&lt;p&gt;If you can&amp;#x27;t relate - think of all the &amp;quot;gun people&amp;quot; who think they are experts on gun safety and then they end up shooting themselves by accident.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rcme</author><text>Probably many millions? It&amp;#x27;s a pretty popular thing to do in Eastern Europe.</text></comment>
<story><title>Top Russian rocket scientist dies from ‘mushroom poisoning’</title><url>https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/russia-scientist-mushroom-poison/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chongli</author><text>How many millions of people go mushroom hunting?</text></item><item><author>scotty79</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s like few cases per season per million people eating wild shrooms.</text></item><item><author>hunson_abadeer</author><text>It is not common at all. You have maybe several people dying every year, which is in the &amp;quot;hit by lightning&amp;quot; territory. It&amp;#x27;s very well-publicized whenever it happens, which probably helps keep the numbers low. But this is a &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; unusual way to die.</text></item><item><author>renegade-otter</author><text>This is not really suspicious. I regularly went foraging for shrooms in Ukraine with my gram gram, but I was not allowed to pick anything, of course. It requires expertise.&lt;p&gt;In that part of the world, this is very common, and so are the cases of people poisoning themselves because they think they are good at it.&lt;p&gt;If you can&amp;#x27;t relate - think of all the &amp;quot;gun people&amp;quot; who think they are experts on gun safety and then they end up shooting themselves by accident.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ben_w</author><text>Given approximately everyone&amp;#x27;s heard of it, and warnings about it, but also that I don&amp;#x27;t personally know anyone who tells me that they personally do this, my guess is in the order of 1% of the population. Might be more, might be less.&lt;p&gt;1% of Russia would be 1.5 million (and given this thread, 412k for Ukraine).</text></comment>