I'm Still Alive

August 17, 2005 5:11 PM

Death By Caffeine I just learned that it would take 155.11 cans of Mountain Dew to kill me, according to this odd little service.
posted by jragon (44 comments total)

Interesting that it doesn't specify a time-frame (as far as I can tell). Evidently it would take 400-something cans of Barq's Root Beer to kill me, but I'm pretty damn sure I've downed that many in my time!

(Yes, I assume this means all at once...)
posted by brundlefly at 5:19 PM on August 17, 2005

Where's coffee? Espresso? Mocha Latte Frapuccino?!?!?!?!?!?!


This of course does make me want to get 174 cans of red bull, empty them into a pot over medium heat, bring it to a boil, and then reduce the stuff down to a thick syrup of death.
posted by redbeard at 5:34 PM on August 17, 2005

Apparently caffeinated drinks don't exist if they're not branded. Lame.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 5:38 PM on August 17, 2005

Caffeine: ORL-RAT LD50 192 mg kg-1

Now if only I knew what that meant...
posted by tiamat at 5:47 PM on August 17, 2005

If you feed critters 192mg per kg of mass, half of them die.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:56 PM on August 17, 2005

Damn, 260.68 cans of RC Cola? I really like RC, but if I were out to die I'd rather play in traffic.
posted by davy at 5:58 PM on August 17, 2005

tiamat:

Caffeine: ORL-RAT LD50 192 mg kg-1

Now if only I knew what that meant...

I think it means that when given to rats, a dose of 192 mg per kg of body weight resulted in the death of 50% of the rats.
posted by SteveTheRed at 5:59 PM on August 17, 2005

redbeard - exactly. No coffee, or tea? What is this list for, caffeine pansies?
posted by jb at 6:03 PM on August 17, 2005

Next: how to slip it syrupticiously into the diet of your enemy without them knowing it....
posted by hal9k at 6:05 PM on August 17, 2005

"It was (burp) YOU! I trusted you and (aaarrrrpppp) you've been (braaaackkkk!) killing me so all along! Aaaaaah!!! (blurp)"
posted by hal9k at 6:08 PM on August 17, 2005

251.45 cans of Pepsi to off me

coffee should really be on that list.
posted by amberglow at 6:10 PM on August 17, 2005

It would take 400.40 cans of Diet Coke to "put medown", apparently.

Assuming I don't chug the drink down, it takes me roughly 10 minutes to drink 375ml of Diet Coke. That's 6 cans an hour. 144 cans a day. Probably less given all the toilet breaks that drinking so much Diet Coke would bring on. This means I'd have to drink for roughly 3 days straight to bring on death.

Meh. Sounds like far too much effort. And I don't really want to die anyway. But it's kind of interesting to know. Great link.
posted by Effigy2000 at 6:11 PM on August 17, 2005

Now that you’ve had the 5 second intro, here’s what you came for:

Name Ounces Caffeine (mg) mg/oz

Starbucks Double Shot 6.5 120 18.46
posted by Jikido at 6:14 PM on August 17, 2005

*hands shaking uncontrollably, pisses himself, without even buying a 50-dollar iBook*
posted by matteo at 6:20 PM on August 17, 2005

Pah, just go for the No-doz, you could actually accomplish something in a reasonable amount of time
posted by edgeways at 6:20 PM on August 17, 2005

How many adderall is that?
posted by gorgor_balabala at 6:23 PM on August 17, 2005

Remember, kids: It only takes one can of Pepsi to kill you. Provided, of course, somebody throws it hard enough.
posted by eriko at 6:25 PM on August 17, 2005

uh i dont get it ive drunk way more than 304 cans of diet coke and i'm still alive.

..or are I?
posted by jeremy b at 6:32 PM on August 17, 2005

SteveTheRed is correct. LD50 is the lethal dose for 50% of the test population.

For the curious, here's the LD50 for a slew of drugs via Erowid.

(gorgor_balabala: look here.)
posted by zerokey at 6:44 PM on August 17, 2005

er...this is the link I meant for the LD50 list.

oopsie.
posted by zerokey at 6:46 PM on August 17, 2005

hal9k, it's a good thing I wasn't drinking a caffeinated beverage when I read that. Because it would have hurt coming out my nose.
posted by mygothlaundry at 7:03 PM on August 17, 2005

i'm just getting an error:

WordPress database error: [Got error 28 from storage engine]
SELECT DISTINCT * FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND post_name = 'death-by-caffeine' AND post_date_gmt <= '2005-08-18 02:40:59' AND (post_status = "static") GROUP BY wp_posts.ID ORDER BY post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 10
posted by puke & cry at 7:40 PM on August 17, 2005 [1 favorite]

It would take 35.15 cans of BuzzWater to put you down.

This one seems doable if I ever choose to stop living. I'll make a note of that.
posted by Alison at 8:12 PM on August 17, 2005

WordPress database error: [Got error 28 from storage engine]
SELECT DISTINCT * FROM wp_posts WHERE 1=1 AND post_name = 'death-by-caffeine' AND post_date_gmt < '2005-08-18 02:40:59' and (post_status="static" ) group by wp_posts.id order by post_date desc limit 0, 10/em>

So THAT's the entry for coffee.
posted by Jazznoisehere at 8:13 PM on August 17, 2005

"Remember, kids: It only takes one can of Pepsi to kill you. Provided, of course, somebody throws it hard enough."

Or if you mix it with poprocks.

SHUT UP! It is TOO true! It's how Mikey died.
posted by piratebowling at 8:37 PM on August 17, 2005

...and then reduce the stuff down to a thick syrup of death. - posted by redbeard

A pack of cigarettes works better =)

It only takes one can of Pepsi to kill you. Provided, of course, somebody throws it hard enough. - posted by eriko

I guess that's what re-purposed potato guns are for, eh?
posted by PurplePorpoise at 8:47 PM on August 17, 2005

Ah, it's working now.

It would take 232.05 cans of Diet Coke to put you down.

I think it would take less than that to bust my stomach open and kill me. Nevermind that you would vomit before you got there.
posted by puke & cry at 8:57 PM on August 17, 2005 [1 favorite]

It would take 87.02 cans of Starbucks Double Shot to put you down.

So 87.02 cans at 6.5 ounces per can, that's 565.63 ounces.
At 120 mg caffeine per can, that's 18.47 mg/ounce.


It would take 52.21 cans of BuzzWater to put you down.

52.21 cans at 16.9 ounces per can, that's 882.349 ounces.
At 200 mg caffeine per can, that's 11.83 mg/ounce.

Clearly, doubleshot is a better killer.
posted by puke & cry at 9:13 PM on August 17, 2005 [1 favorite]

It would take 725.83 cans of Peach Tea Snapple to put you down.

Lucky thing I got that Costco membership.
posted by MrBadExample at 9:14 PM on August 17, 2005

I would like to see additional starbucks drinks here.
posted by puke & cry at 9:15 PM on August 17, 2005 [1 favorite]

I need to know how many venti red-eyes it would take. I may be close to finding out. I'll add it to my will that somebody has to come back here and post the number.
posted by jay.jansheski at 2:41 AM on August 18, 2005

Does this all still apply if I am wearing a healing crystal?
posted by srboisvert at 2:43 AM on August 18, 2005

By the way these amounts of any liquid, caffeine or not, will probably kill you anyway from hyponatremia.
posted by srboisvert at 3:16 AM on August 18, 2005

This is lame. I just wanted to check 'coffee', you know. That thing that old, non-cool people like me drink?

So, I had to go look myself; apparently coffee can range from 75-250 mg per 6 oz, but generally it's close to 100mg. It would take 17.28g of caffeine for my 90kg to hit LD50, which means about a hundred and seventy-three 6 oz cups, or 30.66 litres of coffee.

You'd even have to eat at least an entire bottle of caffeine pills to hit it. I guess I"m not too worried about caffeine overdose as death. And there are definite health benefits!

Intake of caffeine can up to halve a patient's risk of diabetes mellitus type 2. While this was originally noticed in patients who consumed high amounts (7 cups a day), the relationship has now been shown to be linear (Salazar-Martinez 2004).

posted by blacklite at 3:36 AM on August 18, 2005

Oh, and to brundlefly's question above about time-frame, apparently the metabolic half-life of caffeine, i.e., the time it takes for your body to process 50% of it, is generally somewhere around 5 hours for adult humans. (Although it can vary a lot.)
So you'd have to probably drink more than 400 cans of Barq's. If you could average one can a minute (which would be pretty impressive).... hm, it's a differential equation, isn't it. .. ah. with no solution. Assuming you metabolize caffeine at the above rate, one can of Barq's a minute would never get you above 10 grams of caffeine in your bloodstream. (Although see above re hyponatremia.)
It'd take you 184 cups of espresso at that rate to hit 15g in your bloodstream. ... I really think I'd be good after #10...
posted by blacklite at 4:33 AM on August 18, 2005

It would take 257.83 cans of TAB to put me down.
posted by sciurus at 4:49 AM on August 18, 2005

hyponatremia

The lack of R.E.M music as an infant?
posted by eriko at 5:13 AM on August 18, 2005

I wonder how large a serving of chocolate-covered coffee beans would do the trick...?
posted by alumshubby at 5:35 AM on August 18, 2005

"Thick syrup of death."

My official Funny Phrase du Jour -- thanks, Redbeard!
posted by bitter-girl.com at 6:21 AM on August 18, 2005

Only a couple thousand bottles of decaffinated Lemon Tea Snapple needed to snuff me. Probably be a whole lot easier to just crush myself to death. I wonder how much 2000 bottles of decaffinated Lemon Tea Snapple weigh? Anyway the sugar would undoubtably kill me first.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:58 AM on August 18, 2005

silly me, i was putting in the weight of the beverage, not the weight of my body. no wonder it would only take 0.62 cups of coffee to off me
posted by slogger at 1:54 PM on August 18, 2005

Actually, the water in Barq's would end up killing you before the caffeine did.
posted by graventy at 2:29 PM on August 18, 2005

What about No-Doze?
posted by OmieWise at 8:02 AM on August 19, 2005

Oh jeez, somehow the comments have devolved into talking about politics:

as for the Middle East, I’m Canadian and i fully support the actions taken by the US forces. I firmly believe that if the American Leadership was not so conserned with plakating the bleeding heart nations, Afganistan would have been bombed flat moments after the towers fell in NYC.
but it was not.
posted by jragon at 1:06 PM on August 19, 2005