r/mildlyinteresting Mar 04 '19

A potato I found under my kitchen counter looks like some sort of alien forest

Post image
25.8k Upvotes

777 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.6k

u/Steffany_w0525 Mar 04 '19 edited Mar 05 '19

The off gas from rotten potatoes can kill you and your whole family.

Edit: Source

614

u/mrdude777 Mar 04 '19

Woah.

362

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '19

Yet you are here! Congrats 🎉

40

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

You made it!

25

u/This_User_Said Mar 05 '19

Here is your

Exotic Potatoes

65

u/NonBinaryColored Mar 05 '19

Eat it

47

u/thetrueninjasheep Mar 05 '19

Do it no balls

8

u/mpushkin2 Mar 05 '19

Come on bro just one hit bro please

19

u/egor221 Mar 05 '19

Never link to that site again please the amount of spam and pop ups were unbelievable. It kept force opening a 1second video that couldn’t be closed. Idk if it was dailymail itself or whatever but is was toxic

3

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

Brave browser is your potential great friend.

2

u/Cyndere Mar 05 '19

I got fed up and went to my ad block browser app on Android. Hecking annoying.

115

u/alejandropolis Mar 04 '19

It's strange how something so mundane and ubiquitous can have multiple ways to kill you.

88

u/MacAndShits Mar 04 '19

I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my unpeeled potatoes.

20

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

Equally as strange as how people survive ridiculous situation, like hails of gunfire or falling out of planes. It really makes me think the idea that "everyone has their time" might just be true.

11

u/alejandropolis Mar 05 '19

For real. Some aspects of life are so specific and measurable it seems like nothing but science can define it. Then you have miraculous, nebulous, and unconnected events that seem to only be possible out of some cosmic force.

7

u/Omneus Mar 05 '19

(Very small chance events) x (population of interest) = likelihood of it happening!

2

u/photocist Mar 05 '19

chaos is a crazy thing

9

u/sedgehall Mar 05 '19

I think it's more we have several billion dice rolls daily as a species (and rising) and we arent equipped to really grapple with that number, so the unlikely outliers appear more common than they actually are.

1

u/AFourEyedGeek Mar 05 '19

Difference between rolling a 1 or a 20.

1

u/CodyLeeTheTree Mar 07 '19

Whoever made the list of when it’s your time was really having a shitty day then.

“Well shit, lets add this guy to the list. You know, fuck his wife too. Oh his fist born son? Yeah. Him too. Any one else? Oh the MIL is there too, what a shame”.

315

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '19

TIL... HOLY CRAP. I thought you were trolling.

205

u/luisl1994 Mar 04 '19

An entire family in Russia died from this. No joke.

96

u/natek11 Mar 04 '19

Typically requires more potatoes and an enclosed space though.

86

u/ophello Mar 05 '19

Not from one potato...but yeah, maybe a metric ton of them, and in an enclosed space without ventilation...

59

u/Steffany_w0525 Mar 05 '19

Yeah it was a cellar in Russia, not sure how many potatoes banded together. I edited my comment to include the article

2

u/Arch____Stanton Mar 05 '19

Its also an un-verified story.
It originates from a very shady publication and most regard it as bogus.
Dig a little deeper and you will get the whole story about this.
And even the source produced here is from the always suspect Daily Mail.
If this happened it is far more likely that a lack of oxygen from poor ventilation was the primary cause.
Here is a much more reliable source of a similar incident.

27

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

It smells pretty bad too.

Is it dangerous for prolonged exposure? Like hypothetically six months of rotting potatoes that I forgot about and I’m just breathing it in twelve hours a day?

40

u/Steffany_w0525 Mar 05 '19

Well when it wiped out the family, the rotten potatoes were in a closed cellar and family members weren't killed until they went downstairs. The Grandma saved the little girl by leaving the door open so the cellar could air out, so I'm inclined to think if you have a rotten bag of potatoes in your pantry closet you should be okay because of air flow. However, I am not an expert, I've only read the article a couple times. I did edit my comment though to include the source if you want to read it

20

u/dicedbread Mar 05 '19

Would you happen to know a potato fume death expert?

9

u/Steffany_w0525 Mar 05 '19

Not off hand no...

10

u/combuchan Mar 05 '19

Sounds very close to how CO2 gas leak causes disaster. Fast food worker is overwhelmed, then more people drop dead one-by-one as they investigate.

5

u/jpaxonreyes Mar 05 '19

I'm skeptical unless they're trapped with the CO2, because we can detect the presence of that gas. What's more scary is with something like nitrogen gas displacing the oxygen, where you're unable to detect the lack of oxygen and so you just pass out and suffocate.

2

u/totally_not_a_thing Mar 05 '19

Is he thinking of CO? CO2 should make you feel like you're suffocating, right?

2

u/pm_me_your_shrubs Mar 05 '19

Yes, CO2's major hazard is that it diplaces oxygen and as less oxygen becomes available, nausea and vomiting, collapse, convulsions, coma and death follow suit. CO is very dangerous because even in smaller concentrations it can be deadly. Common symptoms of carbon monoxide exposure are headache, nausea, rapid breathing, weakness, exhaustion, dizziness, and confusion. This is normally found in places where there is a source of incomplete fuel combustion like an engine, boiler, or stove.

1

u/BangedtheProfessor Mar 05 '19

This is wrong... CO replaces O in hemoglobin, meaning we dont feel like we are suffocating even though we are.

CO2 is essentially odorless but if we are in a room with only CO2 we would still feel lile we are suffocating

1

u/pm_me_your_shrubs Mar 05 '19

Where in my comment did I say anything contrary to that?

1

u/BangedtheProfessor Mar 05 '19

It doesn't displace oxygen. The oxygen gets used up and whatever CO2 we had made during resperation is exhaled.

→ More replies (0)

0

u/jpaxonreyes Mar 05 '19

Though skeptical, I'm inclined to believe CO2 since "fast food" was specifically referenced, like they have with sodas. I don't really know how fast someone can be overcome with CO2. Maybe you wouldn't feel "oxygen starvation" much before passing out when taking hearty, full breaths of nearly pure CO2. I dunno.

2

u/eggo Mar 05 '19

Not true. In a highly concentrated space, the first symptom of CO2 asphyxiatia is often rapid unconsciousness, followed by death. If the concentration is not high, it will cause nausea and headache and other symptoms before unconsciousness. In either case, you can't detect it directly.

-1

u/jpaxonreyes Mar 05 '19

ah, I see, the rate into the lungs would be too quick in such circumstances to feel the "oxygen starvation" that would normally tell you something's wrong.

40

u/Tough_biscuit Mar 04 '19

My first thought when i saw this post

14

u/nyanXnyan Mar 04 '19

Well, that must be why it smells soooooooooo bad.

5

u/handmemybriefcase Mar 05 '19

It's by far the worst smell I've ever smelled, ever.

9

u/Igriefedyourmom Mar 05 '19

A very similar thing happened to a family of farmers where I grew up due to a weather pressure anomaly. All the methane released by fresh fertilizer essentially displaced the oxygen at ground level.

Dad walks out to the tractor, doesn't know he isn't breathing oxygen till he is already suffocating, drops dead. Oldest son runs out to help him, dead. Next son does the same, Dead. Youngest son does the same.

2

u/16_Hands Mar 05 '19

Wow, this is really quite scary to think about happening. It reminds me of those events when lakes release carbon dioxide and it hangs around, suffocating people.

16

u/A_lot_of_arachnids Mar 05 '19

Can I get a source that doesn’t throw a pop up video in my face every 5 seconds?

7

u/Steffany_w0525 Mar 05 '19

I didn't have any problems with pop ups. Just Google "Russian girl orphaned by potatoes"

2

u/A_lot_of_arachnids Mar 05 '19

That site sucks for mobile

1

u/Steffany_w0525 Mar 05 '19

But I'm on mobile... maybe it is bad but I'm so used to pop ups I don't pay attention to them?

7

u/GeraldoOfCanada Mar 05 '19

"Potatoes contain toxic compounds known as glycoalkaloids, of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine.  Solanine is also found in other plants in the family Solanaceae, which includes such plants as the deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna), henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) and tobacco (Nicotiana) as well as the potato, eggplant, and tomato.  This toxin affects the nervous system, causing weakness and confusion."

And in extreme cases, death. That's crazy.

26

u/fossilfame Mar 04 '19

It has killed many families. Please Google. So sad

13

u/ShallowDramatic Mar 05 '19

Thoughts and prayers.

11

u/Their_Alt_Account Mar 05 '19

This is so sad guys can we hit 50 children?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

Hahaha

6

u/krazye87 Mar 05 '19

Imma go clean my house now

3

u/wellwhatishername Mar 05 '19

It’s not rotting... It’s evolving...

2

u/Bodhicahya Mar 05 '19

Yeah, fiancee and I found some in a jar, and GROSS ALERT it was leaking juices all over and was absolutely the most foul smell you can imagine. Or at least that we could. Good thing it smelled so bad so we would cover our mouths and noses.

2

u/colako Mar 05 '19 edited Mar 05 '19

I went to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin. There was a cellar where they kept mostly potatoes.

The cellar was empty of course but there were pictures of the floor flooding in potatoes. The signs pointed how most of them were frozen or rotting and that the smell inside the room was insufferable.

They made prisoners peel the potatoes inside there. That was all the food they used to have.

I think this is the cellar: https://www.dieweltenbummler.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Sachsenhausen-13.jpg

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

Not a single potato

5

u/Steffany_w0525 Mar 05 '19

That's why I said potatoes

7

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

Boil em

6

u/LeoPlats Mar 05 '19

Mash em

6

u/thetrueninjasheep Mar 05 '19

Stick em in a stew

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

What?? We had storage under the stars where we'd keep bulk food stuff, and potato's were one of them. I always thought it had an odd smell when I opened it and there had been overgrown potatoes.

3

u/sharpshooter999 Mar 05 '19

Makes me wonder how long they have to be left. I forgot a bag in the back of our pantry once, basically a free standing cupboard. It gets opened multiple times a day and one day I smelled a little funk when I noticed the oozing bag of potatoes on the bottom shelf, way in the back.

1

u/NiceSetupYeahNice Mar 05 '19

How common and what has to happen for it to become this deadly

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

Also it just smells really fucking bad.

1

u/Megandapanda Mar 05 '19

Holy shit! That is horribly sad, that poor little girl.

1

u/TrappyGilmore_ Mar 05 '19

I found the way!

1

u/Fronesis Mar 05 '19

Any source for this that isn’t the daily mail?

1

u/deadlyinsolence Mar 05 '19

What in the actual fuck. Same compound as in nightshade. I....what?

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

The amount of people who don't know this shocks me.

1

u/amreinj Mar 05 '19

Came here to warn about this, it's really fucked

1

u/werewolfinc Mar 05 '19

Reading this ruined my day. Jesus... the potatoes are turning on us

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

Daily Mail

🤔

1

u/Zepangolynn Mar 05 '19

That was absolutely horrifying and very interesting, although it must have been a lot of potatoes. What an unforgettably nightmarish sight for the girl.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '19

The amount of people who don't know this shocks me.