Middle School Students Lose Sight, Vomit After Mass Consumption Of Insanely Hot Ghost Peppers

Most middle school graduates have some fond memories of the place and some not so fond, but few can say they were present for anything as memorable and all-out intense as what The Dayton Daily News reports went down in the cafeteria of Western Ohio’s Milton-Union Middle School on Friday. Before any readers get alarmed, note that there was no crime committed and no one was permanently harmed. Medics were called, however, when about 40 students ingested Bhut Jolokia peppers — also known as ghost peppers, one of the hottest varieties of chillies in the world.

First, a bit of context. “The Scoville Scale” is a system used for measuring the hotness of chili pepper varieties. The scale looks at the content of capsaicin, the ingredient that makes something spicy, in each type of pepper and assigns it a number. Tabasco sauce, one of the most popular chillies out there noted for its great heat, clocks in on the scale at 8,000 units. Ghost peppers, the ones handed out at Milton-Union middle school on Friday, are listed at over 1 million units. That means ghost peppers are 125 times as potent, in terms of spice, as some of the hottest hot sauce on the market. Ghost pepper fumes have even been used in grenades to create a non-lethal way to flush targets out of confined spaces, writes International Business Times.

The point is, the peppers are very, very, VERY intense. Presumably, the unnamed middle school student who handed 40 of them out to random people in the Milton-Union Middle School cafeteria knew this, although it is a fair guess that he or she did not realize the peppers would cause some to vomit and others to have trouble seeing, blotchy skin, and, of course, very irritable bowels.

Nor, one can assume, did the “victims” realize what they were getting into when they were handed the pepper and thought “well, how bad could it be?”

I'd have to say these are some nice size #ghostpeppers pic.twitter.com/BjiLL1pOYJ

— terry beaulac (@trapper831) August 25, 2016

Cody Schmidt, an eighth-grader at the middle school, would later reveal that the answer to that question had been “pretty freaking bad.”

“We all drank like 10 cartons of milk,” laughed Schmidt, lucky to be one of the middle school students who had suffered through the ordeal that was not hospitalized.

Milton-Union Middle School Superintendent Dr. Brad Ritchey, who had been present for the mass “poisoning” but had not realized what was going on until too late, corroborated Schmidt’s story.

“Some kids just touched it, other kids just held the peppers up to their mouths and others took a big bite out of them,” Ritchey said.

“Their reactions varied. Some just had their eyes water, others were generally pretty uncomfortable.”

Of course, Ritchey did not describe some of the more severe reactions that the paramedics who quickly arrived at the middle school would talk about later. He did, however, emphasize how great the medical team had been at averting what, if left untreated, could have turned into serious medical problems.

“The response of emergency services was amazing, deputies and help from surrounding paramedics,” gushed the middle school principal.

On one hand, they say, it’s a middle school kid who was probably just trying to play a harmless prank. It’s not like he/she is going to repeat it.

“Kids will be kids, and sometimes they do challenges and dare each other to do things,” noted Pam Bucaro, clinical nurse specialist at Dayton Children’s Hospital.

On the other hand, this incident was quite serious and was definitely in violation of the middle school’s rule that “disruptions” are not allowed.

“These are not games and there can be serious effects when ingesting things,” added Bucaro.

In short, whether or not the middle school student will be punished has not yet been announced.

It should be noted that the ghost pepper, although obviously not for anyone, especially middle school-aged children, to mess around with, they are not actually the hottest pepper out there. The Carolina Reaper takes that title.

On that note, watch the video below which depicts two girls who don’t know what they’re getting into trying Carolina Reapers. Be warned, one of the two has an extremely violent reaction, and it may make some viewers uncomfortable.

[Photo by David McNew/Getty Images]