🚀 go-pugleaf

exe wrote:

> >  Obviously, balloon gas will now have to have a warning label as to its possible toxicity...
>
> When you get done having fun with this one you might want to look up Botulinum Toxin. It and a large
> number of proteins are substantially more toxic than plutonium.
>
> Regards,
>
> Daniel A. Morgan

  Ok, here goes - the deadliest toxin KNOWN to man (I stress known because there's probably some pretty
nasty shit out there that has yet to be discovered) is Botulinum Toxin A, and a dose of 0.00000003 mg/kg
is considered the LD50 (the dose at which you would expect a 50% mortality rate among lab animals).
That means that 0.0000024 mg is enough to kill an 80 kg (175 lb) individual (could be less, could be
more, depending on your luck).
    A distant second is  Tetanus Toxin A, with an LD50 of 0.000005 mg/kg
    Incidentally, botulinum bacteria are found living, breeding, and having a great time on most pork
products, and tetanus is bloody everywhere (yes, including rusty nails) - yet for some reason, we're not
all dead yet.
    Plutonium, on the other hand, is a substantially less deadly toxin than dozens of other, naturally
occuring substances (and many man-made ones), and it would require a few milligrams of the stuff to kill
you outright. (Plutonium doesn't even make the top ten list of things guaranteed to make your day go
down the crapper)

  I also don't know if I agree with Michael Kagalenko's definition of a toxin as "a substance that in
some form causes damage to the body which eventually leads to death" - I hardly think that a .357 Magnum
slug or a Louisville Slugger could qualify as a toxin, although these seem to fit the definition, as
does Helium, which is not really a toxin either