Smallest thing that can kill you?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ll award this as the winner. Chicken dinner.

22

Whoo - not bad!

Okay, that’s definitely in the running for the most deadly thing you can grow in your back yard! :eek:

23

Don’t forget Yew Bushes @ 4oz to kill 150 pound animal. Most common sign of toxicity: “Found dead”

24

As any virus kills* by* reproducing, I fail to see how this disqualifies it. Indeed, nothing very small will kill you unless its presence in your system has snowballing consequences of some kind.

I would lay long odds that that amoeba that you mentioned would have to reproduce itself into many, many amoebae before it could really do you any harm either.

25

A proton:

What would happen happen to my hand if I put it in the beam of the Large Hadron Collider?

Okay, technically that video is about a whole beam, but from most of the answers that would be overkill–a single well-aimed, well-accelerated proton should do it (especially if you account for the halo).

26

Obviously not going to happen IRL, but if somehow your body wound up playing host to a pinprick-sized black hole, you’d get sucked in after awhile.

27

He survived exposure to a proton beam in a particle accelerator. But the LHC is much higher energy so maybe a single particle from that really could kill you.

28

A prion is good but it only works by converting normal proteins into more prions so I think that’s out.

The photon/laser beam discussion is probably the winner but since it would take such effort to contrive a situation where it did kill it seems lame.

Polonium is our next bet, and how timely - it was discovered on Yassar Arafat’s properties - and was also used to poison Alexander Litvinenko. Secret agent style stuff, to be sure. But it does seem to lack a certain organic charm.

I’d always heard botulism, as mentioned, was the nastiest microscopic for a human. The anaerobic part always scared me.

I also regarded the castor plant, as another posted stated, as the deadliest (most toxic?) plant.

THe Blue-ring Octopus, at 5-8 in., will kill you.

29

Maybe a single errant prEon?

30

Actually, a high powered laser gun like the Navy has or maybe even a medical laser could easily be used to kill you. With that, it’s just photons killing you, and since photons don’t have mass* or volume*, that’s pretty damn small, wouldn’t you say?

*mumble mumble more or less, let’s not get too technical shall we?

31

However, the “berry”, the bright red aril surrounding the seed, is edible.

CMC

32

Cat Whisperer

You probably would not want to go into your back yard and suck any part of one of these,

http://www.vincelewis.net/monkshood.html

Around 2 to 2.5mg will likely kill you

Problem is, that it is quite a common garden plant, you are not advised to handle the corms with bare hands.

33

I fail to see why the need for some things to reproduce rules them out. You put one virus in your body, and later you are dead. The mechanism seems rather irrelevant.

34

Current Reddit thread:
If something as small as an atom shot through your body would it be detrimental? Or even a string of atoms being passed, at fast speeds, horizontally through your body.

35

What ever it is, I’m sure it comes from Australia.

36

Does the vacuum of space count?

37

For certain. The national motto of Australia is*: “Everything here can kill you.”

    • not really, but it should be.
38

When cleaning your grill with a wire brush, if one of those wires come loose, and you eat it. Goodluck

39

Yet another reason why I do my swimming under water instead of on top of it.

40

Fucking ow!

:eek: