January 1, 2026 • 30 mins
A Moscow corporate party turned into a medical emergency when a celebrity chef's flashy "cryo-show" cocktail expanded inside a man's stomach like an internal airbag, rupturing the organ and sending him to the ICU — and he's far from the only victim.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
A Moscow corporate party turned into a medical emergency when
a celebrity chef's flashy cryo show cocktail expanded inside a
man's stomach like an internal airbag, rupturing the organ and
sending him to the ICU. And he's far from the
only victim. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Dark News.
(00:33):
Happy New Year, everybody, and welcome to our very first
episode of Weird Dark News for twenty twenty six. Corporate
holiday parties are notorious for awkward small talk with the
accounting department, questionable dancing by middle management, and that one
coworker who treats the open bar like a personal challenge
from God. But a corporate Christmas party in Moscow just
(00:55):
last week, December twenty twenty five added a new achievement
to the list, sending a guest to emergency surgery because
the drinks were served at negative one hundred and ninety
six degrees celsius. Yeah. Turns out the holiday spirit can
be deadly, especially when it has been flash frozen with
a cryogenic compound capable of rupturing internal organs. The incident
(01:19):
occurred at Egrostolov, which translates to game of tables. A
culinary studio in Moscow then offers cooking classes, children's events,
and corporate retreats. On this particular evening, the studio had
hired an unnamed celebrity chef to entertain guests with a
flashy cryo show, which is exactly what it sounds like,
(01:39):
cocktails made with liquid nitrogen, creating that dramatic fog effect
beloved buy mad scientists, mixologists who think that they're mad scientists,
and apparently anybody who wants to feel like they're drinking
at a Halloween themed nightclub run by chemistry professors. With
poor judgment, the chef poured liquid nitrogen directly into paper cups,
(02:00):
creating thick clouds of vapor that billowed over the drinks
while guests laughed and filmed. This is the part where
you might expect someone anyone to mention that liquid nitrogen
boils at negative one hundred and ninety six degrees celsius.
That's negative three hundred and twenty one degrees fahrenheit. For
those who prefer their temperatures and American chaos units like
(02:21):
me and you should absolutely, under no circumstances be consuming
this before it has completely evaporated. No one mentioned this.
According to the Russian telegram channel Baza, which originally reported
the incident, a thirty eight year old guest named Sergee
was handed one of these smoking cups and allegedly encouraged
(02:42):
by the chef to drink it immediately. A viral video
circulating online shows what happened next. Serge takes a stip
from the paper cup, and within seconds, nitrogen vapor bursts
from his mouth and nose like he's an ice dragon.
Overdoing it. At last call at the South Pole Pub,
he recoils instantly, clutches his abdomen, and collapses in agony.
(03:05):
Before drinking, Sergey reportedly joked to the chef, it was
nice working with you. His coworkers probably thought this was
office humor about the party being awkward. It was, in fact,
an accidentally prophetic comment about the state of his internal organs.
To understand why drinking liquid nitrogen is roughly equivalent to
swallowing a small bomb, you need to understand one number
(03:28):
six hundred ninety six, That is the expansion ratio of
liquid nitrogen. One leader of liquid nitrogen becomes six hundred
and ninety six leaders of nitrogen gas at room temperature.
To put this into perspective, imagine trying to fit six
hundred ninety six basketballs into a space designed for one basketball.
(03:50):
Now imagine that space is your stomach. Now imagine the
basketballs are appearing instantaneously and with great enthusiasm inside a room.
This expansion is merely annoying. It can reduce oxygen levels
and potentially cause asphyxiation in enclosed spaces. Inside a human stomach,
which is decidedly not six hundred ninety six liters in
(04:13):
capacity and did not consent to this physics experiment, the
expansion creates what medical professionals would describe as an extremely
bad time. The stomach, faced with the sudden presence of
hundreds of times its expected gas volume, does what any
reasonable organ would do when asked to accommodate the impossible.
It ruptures. Doctors determined that when Sergey swallowed the cocktail,
(04:38):
the liquid nitrogen began rapidly expanding inside his body. His
stomach perforated almost instantly. Emergency services transported him to intensive care,
where surgeons operated to suture the damaged organ. He reportedly
regained consciousness after surgery, though his condition was described as serious.
The physics here are unforgiving. Wood nitrogen has a boiling
(05:01):
point of negative one hundred ninety six degrees celsius, so
cold that carbon, steel, plastics, and rubber become brittle and
fracture under even minimal stress, so cold that brief contact
with skin can cause cryogenic burns, so cold that even
the vapor can rapidly freeze human tissue and eye fluid.
(05:21):
And so cold that when it hits the warm, moist
environment of a human body like a stomach, it doesn't
just warm up politely. It explosively converts to gas with
the force of a substance that has been cryogenically compressed
to one six hundred and ninety six of its natural
volume and would very much like to return to its
original state, thank you. The Culinary Studio has not publicly
(05:44):
commented on whether they'll be updating their cryoshow protocols, though
one might hope inform guests that the drink their holding
could physically rupture their stomach makes it onto the new checklist.
The Moscow incident somewhat horrifyingly not the first time liquid
nitrogen cocktails have sent someone to emergency surgery. The substance
(06:05):
has been rupturing stomachs with remarkable consistency for over a decade,
which you'd think would be information more widely shared among
people who serve it to strangers. Instead, we have what
amounts to a global clinical trial on whether human internal
organs can withstand cryogenic assault. A spoiler, no, they can't.
(06:25):
The most famous case occurred in twenty twelve in Lancaster, England,
when an eighteen year old Gabby Scanlon went out to
celebrate her birthday with friends at Oscar's Wine Bar and Bistro.
A bartender, learning it was her birthday, brought her a
complimentary Jaegermeister shot made with liquid nitrogen, a free drink
with the potential to kill her. Scanlon drank two of
(06:47):
these shots. The first went down find the second caused
to what witnesses described as an explosion inside her stomach
approximately four seconds after it was poured. Four seconds that's
less time that it takes to unlock your phone. Smoke
billowed from her mouth and nose, her stomach began to
expand visibly. She told the court she felt something was
(07:08):
wrong immediately. Smoke was coming from my nose and mouth straightway.
I knew something was not right my stomach expanded. She
was rushed to Lancaster Royal Infirmary, where doctors found a
massive perforation in her stomach. The damage was so severe
surgeons had no choice but to perform a total gastrectomy,
the complete removal of her stomach, connecting her esophagus directly
(07:32):
to her small bowel. Police stated she would have died
if the operation had not been performed urgently. Scanlon did survive,
but she now faces a lifetime of vitamin supplements, liquid
replacement meals, and severely limited food options. She could no
longer enjoy eating the way most people do. In court,
she said she felt angry that these theatrical cocktails seemed
(07:56):
to be aimed at younger people, especially eighteen year olds
who were just legally able to drink and wanted to
try something exciting. The bar was eventually fined one hundred
thousand pounds approximately one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars for negligence,
a very small price for a human stomach and a
lifetime of losing the ability to eat pizza. The owner,
(08:17):
Andrew Dunn, admitted he got the idea after seeing similar
cocktails at a London bar which is a bit like
admitting he got the idea for playing with fireworks after
seeing someone else play with fireworks at a distance too
far to observe the consequences. The bar had told staff
to advise customers to wait ten seconds before drinking. This
waiting time was found to be entirely baseless and insufficient.
(08:40):
The judge said the bar had been too cavalier and
failed to follow warnings about the dangerous chemical. Doctor John Ashton,
Cumbria's director of Public Health, described a scan one as
the victim of an irresponsible alcohol industry that's now competing
on gimmicks. He was perhaps being generous by implying the
industry was merely responsible, rather than actively attempting to discover
(09:03):
creative ways to hospitalize its customers. England and Russia aren't
alone in the liquid and nitrogen hospitalization club. This is
depressingly an international phenomenon. In twenty seventeen, a thirty year
old man in Deli, India, learned an expensive lesson about
cocktail consumption at a trendy bar. The man who requested
(09:23):
to remain anonymous, presumably because guy who had his stomach
opened to like a book by drinking the wrong thing
is not how anybody wants to be known anyway. He
consumed a cocktail with white smoke flowing from it without
waiting for the nitrogen to evaporate, then experiencing discomforts, but
chalking it up to acid reflux, he accepted and drank
(09:43):
a second one. Within seconds, his stomach began to swell.
He developed extreme pain and difficulty breathing. He was rushed
to Columbia Asia Hospital in Gergawn, where doctors performed emergency surgery.
His stomach, according to the surgeon, doctor amit Deep Tagaswami,
us open like a book. The tear was so large
that it could not simply be stitched back together. The
(10:05):
tissue near the perforation was too damaged. Doctors removed the
damaged portions of his stomach and connected what remained to
his small intestine. He spent three days on a ventilator
before regaining consciousness. Consuming liquid nitrogen can cause havoc in
a person's system, Doctor Gazwami told reporters in what may
be the most understated medical assessment in the history of understatements,
(10:29):
the gas did not have an escape route. He said,
after the person consumed it and the sphincter closed. This
is what led to a perforation in his stomach. The
Dely case highlighted a troubling regulatory gap. While India's Food
Safety and Standards Authority permits liquid nitrogen as a freezing
agent in food manufacturing, where it evaporates completely before the
(10:49):
product reaches consumers, there were no clear guidelines for its
use in cocktails served immediately at the point of sale.
The substance was simply being poured and served without any
form safety protocols. The first recorded case of liquid nitrogen
ingestion in medical literature occurred in nineteen ninety seven when
a physics student in Massachusetts was demonstrating the Leidenfrost effect,
(11:13):
the phenomenon where a vapor layer forms between a liquid
and a much hotter surface, creating an insulating barrier. This
is why liquid nitrogen skidders across floors like a caffeinated
mercury droplet, and why some demonstrators have historically put liquid
nitrogen in their mouths and exhaled dramatic plumes of condensed
vapor without immediate harm. The keyword there is immediate. The
(11:36):
physics student accidentally swallowed some of the liquid nitrogen during
the demonstration and suffered near fatal injuries. The Leidenfrost effect
works very well at protecting surfaces, it works significantly less
well once the liquid is actively in your digestive system,
where your stomach lining is not particularly interested in supporting
(11:56):
a theatrical physics demonstration. This hasn't stopped people from continuing
the demonstrations. One physicist described in the journal article Boiling
and the Leidenfrost Effect how he used to put liquid
nitrogen in his mouth and exhale plumes vapor until the
liquid quote thermally contracted two of my front teeth so
severely that the enable ruptured into a roadmap of fissures. Quote.
(12:20):
His dentist, presumably after composing himself and resisting the urge
to ask why his patient was gargling with cryogenic substances,
convinced the physicist to drop the demonstration. Sometimes the most
important scientific discoveries are the ones that teach us to
stop doing something. Russia alone has seen multiple nitrogen incidents
(12:40):
in twenty twenty five, just months before the Moscow Christmas
Party disaster. In February twenty twenty five, a twenty three
year old woman at a corporate event at a culinary
studio in Saint Petersburg drank soda containing liquid nitrogen and
suffered an esophageal burn. The esophagus, it turns out, also
does not appreciate being exposed to substances cold enough to
(13:01):
freeze human tissue instantaneously. Russia appears to be conducting an
informal nationwide experiment on whether corporate parties can be made
more interesting through cryogenic beverages. The results so far suggest
they can, though not in the way anyone intended. Perhaps
the most disturbing chapter in the liquid nitrogen saga involves
(13:22):
a product marketed primarily to children, Dragon's Breath deserts. Dragon's
Breath is a frozen treat made from colorful cereal balls,
typically with a flavor similar to fruit loops, dipped in
liquid nitrogen and served in a cup. When placed in
the eater's mouth, the cold of the nitrogen combines with
the warmth of the mouth to release visible vapors, allowing
(13:44):
the person to breathe smoke quote unquote out of their
nose and mouth like a dragon, or like somebody making
a terrible decision, depending on your perspective. The product became
wildly popular on TikTok and Instagram, spreading through mauls, carnival
and fares across Asia and the United States. Children loved it,
of course. The US Food and Drug Administration did not
(14:07):
love it, of course. In twenty eighteen, the FDA issued
a safety alert warning that Dragon's Breath and similar products
marketed under names like Heaven's Breath and Nitro Puff had
caused severe and in some cases, life threatening injuries, such
as damage to skin and internal organs caused by liquid
nitrogen still present in the food or drink. Reports documented
(14:30):
difficulty breathing after inhaling the vapor, and injuries to skin
and internal organs from handling or eating these products. In Florida,
the boy suffered an asthma attack after consuming Dragon's Breath.
His mother, Rachel Richard McKenney, wrote on Facebook that her
son nearly died after his airways constricted from the cold vapor.
They had to drive to a fire station where he
(14:52):
was given life saving treatment. Please, if you know someone
that is even just a mild case of asthma, do
not let them have this snow. She wrote. I should
have known better, but it did not occur to me.
That this food could have this effect. As a result,
my son could have died. In Pensacola, Florida, a fourteen
year old girl went to the hospital after burning her
(15:13):
hand while eating Dragon's Breath. In Indonesia, the problem became
widespread enough that the Ministry of Health issued a public
warning in twenty twenty three after more than twenty five
children were hurt consuming Dragon's Breath candies, including two who
were hospitalized. One four year old boy in Jakarta was
admitted with severe stomach pain. A child in East Java
(15:35):
suffered cold burns on his skin. The ministry urged parents, teachers,
and local health authorities to educate children about the dangers,
presumably because don't eat the thing that's so cold that
can instantly freeze your internal organs is not an intuitive
concept for most elementary school students. The FDA's recommendation was straightforward,
(15:55):
avoid eating, drinking, or handling food products prepared with liquid
nitrogen at the po to sale immediately before consumption. But
this advisory faced the same problem as most sensible health recommendations.
It requires people to know about it before they make
the decision. Its advising against liquid nitrogen doesn't just destroy stomachs.
(16:16):
Given sufficient opportunity, it'll destroy pretty much anything. On January twelfth,
two thousand and six, at approximately three am, a liquid
nitrogen tank at Texas A and M University decided to
demonstrate exactly how much force six hundred ninety six to
one expansion can generate. The tank in question was about
twenty six years old and had at some point been
(16:37):
modified by persons unknown. The pressure relief devices safety mechanisms
specifically designed to prevent exactly this sort of catastrophe had
been removed and sealed with brass plugs. Without these safeguards,
pressure built inside the tank until it reached approximately twelve
hundred psi. Then the bottom blew out. The force of
(16:58):
the explosion was sufficient to prepare the tank through the
ceiling immediately above it. It shattered a reinforced concrete beam
directly below it. It blew the walls of the laboratory
point one two point two meters off their foundations. It
turned the tile floor within a five foot radius into
quarter sized pieces of shrapnel that embedded themselves in the
walls and doors of the lab. The floor cracked, but
(17:20):
held barely thanks to the supporting beam, which was destroyed
In the process, the tank minus its bottom, rocketed through
the concrete ceiling and into the mechanical room above, where
it was stopped only by a water pipe. Had anyone
been in the laboratory at three am, they would very
likely have been killed. The university's accident report noted with
(17:42):
impressive understatement that without these two safeguards in place, it
was only a matter of time until an explosion occurred.
The Texas A and M incident was a laboratory accident.
The twenty twenty one disaster in Gainsville, Georgia, was something
far worse. January twenty eighth, twenty one, a liquid nitrogen
leak at Foundation Food Group's poultry processing plant killed six
(18:06):
workers and injured at least a dozen others. The plant,
located in a city nicknamed Poultry Capital of the World,
used liquid nitrogen to flash freeze processed chicken. A bent
tube in an immersion freezer, likely damaged during maintenance, caused
the freezer to fill with an unsafe level of liquid nitrogen,
which overflowed and rapidly vaporized into a four to five
(18:28):
foot high cloud of nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gases odorless and colorless.
The workers had no warning. Three maintenance workers entered the
freezer room and immediately died of asphyxiation. Additional workers entered
to try to rescue their colleagues and also died immediately.
A sixth person died while being transported to the hospital.
(18:50):
The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board later determined
the deaths were completely preventable. Foundation Food Group had failed
to try treing employees on the hazards of liquid nitrogen.
Workers were not equipped with air monitoring or alarm devices
that could have warned them about the dangerous vapor cloud.
The company had allowed the position responsible for safety management
(19:12):
to remain vacant for over a year before the incident.
OSHA issued fifty nine violations and proposed nearly a million
dollars in penalties, with officials, including Labor Secretary Marty Walsh,
calling the six deaths entirely avoidable. The tragedy was made
worse by the fact that workers died trying to save
their colleagues. At least fourteen employees entered the freezer room
(19:35):
or surrounding area to investigate or attempt rescues. They had
no idea that the invisible cloud they were walking into
was displacing all the oxygen in the air. In two
thousand and nine, a twenty four year old German chef
named Martin Anger learned that liquid nitrogen does not forgive
amateur experimentation. Anger was a fan of molecular gastronomy, the
(19:58):
culinary movement that applied scientific techniques to cooking, popularized by
celebrity chefs like Heston Blumenthal and for Ran Andrea. He
somehow obtained a canister of liquid nitrogen and decided to
try a recipe at his girlfriend's mother's house. This was
in retrospect, several poor decisions stacked on top of each other.
There was an enormous explosion. Anger's right hand was shredded
(20:22):
by the force of the blast. He was rushed to
the hospital, where doctors determined his left hand was so
badly injured it had to be amputated. He also suffered
serious injuries to his leg and genital area. His condition
was described as life threatening and he was placed on
artificial respiration. In a small miracle, surgeons were able to
reattach his left hand, though doctors estimated it would require
(20:46):
up to ten operations and that function would be restored
to only sixty to seventy percent capacity. When police arrived
to investigate the explosion, Anger initially claimed that he'd been
trying to fill a gas lighter. His girlfriend, and apparently
unwilling to cover for him, said he was trying to
empty a canister of liquid nitrogen for cooking. Liquid nitrogen
(21:08):
does not explode easily under normal circumstances. Investigators suspected the
explosion occurred because Anger sealed or pressurized the container in
some way, allowing pressure to build until catastrophic failure. This
is essentially the same mechanism that launched the Texas A
and M tank through a concrete ceiling, except Anger was
(21:28):
holding the container when it happened. The lesson here is
that liquid nitrogen belongs in professional kitchens with trained staff
and proper equipment, not in your girlfriend's mother's apartment while
you attempt to recreate a dish you saw on television.
The appeal of liquid nitrogen in cocktails is purely aesthetic.
It creates that smoky, mysterious fog effect that looks incredible
(21:53):
in photos and videos. It chills drinks faster than nice
ever could. It makes you feel like you're drinking something
from a science fiction movie. Which, to be fair, you
kind of are, although typically in science fiction movies the
characters drinking from smoking vessels are either villains or about
to be attacked by villains. When handled properly by trained professionals,
(22:14):
liquid nitrogen can be used safely in food and drink preparation.
Master mixologists typically swirl the liquid nitrogen around the glass
until it completely evaporates, then pour in the alcohol, which
retains a lingering mist. The key is that nothing is
served until the nitrogen has entirely transformed from cryogenic liquid
(22:35):
into harmless atmospheric gas. At that point, you're basically drinking
from just a very cold glass surrounded by dramatic visual effects.
The problem is that handled properly by trained professionals is
doing an enormous amount of work. In that sentence, the
theatrical appeal of liquid nitrogen tends to attract establishments and
(22:57):
performers more interested in the show than these safety protocols,
and the consequences of getting it wrong are catastrophic. Professor
Peter Barham of the University of Bristol's School of Physics
put it plainly after the Gabby Scanlon case, saying liquid
nitrogen can be used safely in the preparation of foods. However,
since it is not safe to ingest liquid nitrogen, do
(23:19):
care must be taken to ensure that the liquid has
all evaporated before serving any food or drink that was
prepared with liquid nitrogen. That seems straightforward, wait for the
thing that will destroy your internal organs to finish evaporating.
And yet John Emsley, a science writer and fellow at
the Royal Society of Chemistry, explained the physics to the BBC, saying,
(23:42):
if you drink more than a few drops of liquid nitrogen,
certainly a teaspoon, it would freeze and become solid and
brittle like glass. Imagine if that happened in the ailmentary
canal or the stomach. The liquid also quickly picks up heat, boils,
and becomes a gas, which could cause damage such as perforations,
or cause a stomach to burst. A substance so cold
(24:05):
it turns your digestive system brittle like glass, then immediately
converts to six hundred and ninety six times its volume
and gas while still inside you. Not exactly a recipe
for a fun night out. A substance capable of rupturing
human stomachs requiring emergency gastroctomies. Killing workers in industrial accidents,
(24:26):
and hospitalizing children would seem to demand heavy regulation when
used in food service, it doesn't. In the United States,
the FDA's twenty eighteen advisory about Dragon's Breath and similar
products was exactly that and advisory. It warned consumers to
avoid these products and recommended retailers cease selling them, but
(24:47):
it wasn't a ban. It wasn't even a formal regulation,
It was just a strongly worded suggestion. In the UK,
after the Gabby scanl in case, the Food Standards Agency
issued warnings about liquid nitrogen cocktails, but the cocktails weren't banned.
Bars are still free to serve them as long as
they take some care about it, though what constitutes adequate
(25:09):
care remains somewhat ambiguous. Interesting that the UK will ban
words and phrases considered politically incorrect, making it be legal
to use them, yet doesn't ban something that allowed right
to kill you if you consume even a few drops
of it. In India, the Food Safety and Standards Authority
permits liquid nitrogen as a freezing agent in food manufacturing,
(25:30):
but when the Deliman's systomach was perforated. In twenty seventeen,
officials acknowledged there were no clear guidelines for its use
in cocktails. Restaurant owners were using it for theatrical effects
without any formal safety training or protocols. In Russia, liquid
nitrogen cocktails are served at corporate parties with celebrity chefs
who apparently don't warn guests about the risks of consuming
(25:52):
cryogenic substances. The regulatory landscape is a patchwork of warnings, advisories,
and general assumption that people will figure out not to
drink things that can rupture their internal organs. This approach
has not been entirely successful. For the sake of clarity,
here is a recap of what we have documented about
liquid nitrogen consumption just in this episode, all of which
(26:15):
have been documented in news reports and medical literature. A
physics student in Massachusetts nineteen ninety seven accidentally swallowed liquid
nitrogen during a leidenfrost effect demonstration and suffered near fatal injuries.
The first recorded case of ingestion, A physicist cracked the
enamel on two of his front teeth by repeatedly putting
liquid nitrogen in his mouth to exhale vapor, creating a
(26:38):
roadmap of fissures. An eighteen year old in Lancaster, England,
twenty twelve had her entire stomach removed after drinking two
liquid nitrogen Yegermeister shots at a bar on a birthday.
A thirty year old man in Deli twenty seventeen had
portions of his stomach removed after drinking two liquid nitrogen cocktails.
Doctors described his stomach as open like a book. A
(27:00):
German chef two thousand and nine lost both hands in
an explosion while experimenting with liquid nitrogen at his girlfriend's
mother's house. One hand was later reattached. A liquid nitrogen
tank at Texas A and M University in two thousand
and six exploded through a concrete ceiling after someone removed
the pressure relief devices. Six workers in Gainesville, Georgia, twenty
(27:22):
twenty one died of asphyxiation when a liquid nitrogen leak
created an invisible cloud that displaced oxygen in a poultry
plant freezer room. A twenty three year old woman in
Saint Petersburg, Russia, February twenty twenty five suffered esofagial burns
from drinking soda containing liquid nitrogen at a corporate event.
A thirty eight year old man in Moscow, Russia, December
(27:43):
twenty twenty five, had his stomach ruptured by a liquid
nitrogen cocktail at a corporate Christmas party. Twenty five children
in Indonesia twenty twenty two through twenty twenty three were
hurt consuming Dragon's Breath candies, including one four year old
hospitalized with severe stomach pain. A boy in Florida suffered
a near fatal asthma attack after consuming Dragon's Breath. The
(28:05):
fourteen year old girl in Pensacola, Florida, was hospitalized after
burning her hand while eating Dragon's Breath. Multiple lawsuits have
been filed in the United States by individuals who suffered
burns or internal injuries from Dragon's Breath products at mals
and fairs. This list is not comprehensive. It's just what
I had time to share in this episode. These are
(28:25):
simply the incidents that made the news. The actual number
of liquid nitrogen injuries is certainly higher. Sergeys reportedly recovering
in the ICU, having survived a holiday party that very
nearly killed him. His stomach, though sutured, will presumably never
look at a smoking beverage. The same way. Again. The
celebrity chef who served the drink has not been publicly identified,
(28:47):
which is probably for the best, given that the chef
who ruptured a mand's stomach at Christmas is not a
title that inspires consumer confidence. Liquid nitrogen continues to be
legal to use in food service, despite a growing catalog
of perforated stomachs, removed organs, burned aesophaguy, exploded tanks, asphyxiated workers,
(29:08):
hospitalized children, and at least one physics teacher's permanently fissured
tooth enamel. The substance expands six hundred and ninety six
times its volume, has no warning properties like odor or color,
boils at negative one hundred ninety six degrees celsius, and
can cause tissue damage on contact. It is, in other words,
(29:29):
a uniquely terrible substance to pour into a paper cup
and hand to somebody at a party. But it does
make a really impressive fog. If you find yourself in
an establishment serving liquid nitrogen cocktails, the FDA's advice is straightforward,
wait for the nitrogen to fully evaporate before drinking. You'll
know it's evaporated when the bubbling has stopped. And there's
(29:51):
no liquid pooling in the bottom of the cup. If
somebody tells you to drink it immediately, don't. If the
bartender seems unsure about safety, pro order something else and
probably find another place to go drinking with your friends.
And if you're at a corporate party and a celebrity
chef hands you a smoking beverage, maybe just stick with beer.
(30:13):
Your stomach well. Thank you. If you'd like to read
this story for yourself or share the article with a friend,
you can read it on the Weird Darkness website. I've
placed a link to it in the episode description, and
you can find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange,
and more, including numerous stories that never make it to
the podcast in my Weird Darknews blog at Weird Darkness
dot com. Slash news and Happy New Year.
A Moscow corporate party turned into a medical emergency when
a celebrity chef's flashy cryo show cocktail expanded inside a
man's stomach like an internal airbag, rupturing the organ and
sending him to the ICU. And he's far from the
only victim. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Dark News.
(00:33):
Happy New Year, everybody, and welcome to our very first
episode of Weird Dark News for twenty twenty six. Corporate
holiday parties are notorious for awkward small talk with the
accounting department, questionable dancing by middle management, and that one
coworker who treats the open bar like a personal challenge
from God. But a corporate Christmas party in Moscow just
(00:55):
last week, December twenty twenty five added a new achievement
to the list, sending a guest to emergency surgery because
the drinks were served at negative one hundred and ninety
six degrees celsius. Yeah. Turns out the holiday spirit can
be deadly, especially when it has been flash frozen with
a cryogenic compound capable of rupturing internal organs. The incident
(01:19):
occurred at Egrostolov, which translates to game of tables. A
culinary studio in Moscow then offers cooking classes, children's events,
and corporate retreats. On this particular evening, the studio had
hired an unnamed celebrity chef to entertain guests with a
flashy cryo show, which is exactly what it sounds like,
(01:39):
cocktails made with liquid nitrogen, creating that dramatic fog effect
beloved buy mad scientists, mixologists who think that they're mad scientists,
and apparently anybody who wants to feel like they're drinking
at a Halloween themed nightclub run by chemistry professors. With
poor judgment, the chef poured liquid nitrogen directly into paper cups,
(02:00):
creating thick clouds of vapor that billowed over the drinks
while guests laughed and filmed. This is the part where
you might expect someone anyone to mention that liquid nitrogen
boils at negative one hundred and ninety six degrees celsius.
That's negative three hundred and twenty one degrees fahrenheit. For
those who prefer their temperatures and American chaos units like
(02:21):
me and you should absolutely, under no circumstances be consuming
this before it has completely evaporated. No one mentioned this.
According to the Russian telegram channel Baza, which originally reported
the incident, a thirty eight year old guest named Sergee
was handed one of these smoking cups and allegedly encouraged
(02:42):
by the chef to drink it immediately. A viral video
circulating online shows what happened next. Serge takes a stip
from the paper cup, and within seconds, nitrogen vapor bursts
from his mouth and nose like he's an ice dragon.
Overdoing it. At last call at the South Pole Pub,
he recoils instantly, clutches his abdomen, and collapses in agony.
(03:05):
Before drinking, Sergey reportedly joked to the chef, it was
nice working with you. His coworkers probably thought this was
office humor about the party being awkward. It was, in fact,
an accidentally prophetic comment about the state of his internal organs.
To understand why drinking liquid nitrogen is roughly equivalent to
swallowing a small bomb, you need to understand one number
(03:28):
six hundred ninety six, That is the expansion ratio of
liquid nitrogen. One leader of liquid nitrogen becomes six hundred
and ninety six leaders of nitrogen gas at room temperature.
To put this into perspective, imagine trying to fit six
hundred ninety six basketballs into a space designed for one basketball.
(03:50):
Now imagine that space is your stomach. Now imagine the
basketballs are appearing instantaneously and with great enthusiasm inside a room.
This expansion is merely annoying. It can reduce oxygen levels
and potentially cause asphyxiation in enclosed spaces. Inside a human stomach,
which is decidedly not six hundred ninety six liters in
(04:13):
capacity and did not consent to this physics experiment, the
expansion creates what medical professionals would describe as an extremely
bad time. The stomach, faced with the sudden presence of
hundreds of times its expected gas volume, does what any
reasonable organ would do when asked to accommodate the impossible.
It ruptures. Doctors determined that when Sergey swallowed the cocktail,
(04:38):
the liquid nitrogen began rapidly expanding inside his body. His
stomach perforated almost instantly. Emergency services transported him to intensive care,
where surgeons operated to suture the damaged organ. He reportedly
regained consciousness after surgery, though his condition was described as serious.
The physics here are unforgiving. Wood nitrogen has a boiling
(05:01):
point of negative one hundred ninety six degrees celsius, so
cold that carbon, steel, plastics, and rubber become brittle and
fracture under even minimal stress, so cold that brief contact
with skin can cause cryogenic burns, so cold that even
the vapor can rapidly freeze human tissue and eye fluid.
(05:21):
And so cold that when it hits the warm, moist
environment of a human body like a stomach, it doesn't
just warm up politely. It explosively converts to gas with
the force of a substance that has been cryogenically compressed
to one six hundred and ninety six of its natural
volume and would very much like to return to its
original state, thank you. The Culinary Studio has not publicly
(05:44):
commented on whether they'll be updating their cryoshow protocols, though
one might hope inform guests that the drink their holding
could physically rupture their stomach makes it onto the new checklist.
The Moscow incident somewhat horrifyingly not the first time liquid
nitrogen cocktails have sent someone to emergency surgery. The substance
(06:05):
has been rupturing stomachs with remarkable consistency for over a decade,
which you'd think would be information more widely shared among
people who serve it to strangers. Instead, we have what
amounts to a global clinical trial on whether human internal
organs can withstand cryogenic assault. A spoiler, no, they can't.
(06:25):
The most famous case occurred in twenty twelve in Lancaster, England,
when an eighteen year old Gabby Scanlon went out to
celebrate her birthday with friends at Oscar's Wine Bar and Bistro.
A bartender, learning it was her birthday, brought her a
complimentary Jaegermeister shot made with liquid nitrogen, a free drink
with the potential to kill her. Scanlon drank two of
(06:47):
these shots. The first went down find the second caused
to what witnesses described as an explosion inside her stomach
approximately four seconds after it was poured. Four seconds that's
less time that it takes to unlock your phone. Smoke
billowed from her mouth and nose, her stomach began to
expand visibly. She told the court she felt something was
(07:08):
wrong immediately. Smoke was coming from my nose and mouth straightway.
I knew something was not right my stomach expanded. She
was rushed to Lancaster Royal Infirmary, where doctors found a
massive perforation in her stomach. The damage was so severe
surgeons had no choice but to perform a total gastrectomy,
the complete removal of her stomach, connecting her esophagus directly
(07:32):
to her small bowel. Police stated she would have died
if the operation had not been performed urgently. Scanlon did survive,
but she now faces a lifetime of vitamin supplements, liquid
replacement meals, and severely limited food options. She could no
longer enjoy eating the way most people do. In court,
she said she felt angry that these theatrical cocktails seemed
(07:56):
to be aimed at younger people, especially eighteen year olds
who were just legally able to drink and wanted to
try something exciting. The bar was eventually fined one hundred
thousand pounds approximately one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars for negligence,
a very small price for a human stomach and a
lifetime of losing the ability to eat pizza. The owner,
(08:17):
Andrew Dunn, admitted he got the idea after seeing similar
cocktails at a London bar which is a bit like
admitting he got the idea for playing with fireworks after
seeing someone else play with fireworks at a distance too
far to observe the consequences. The bar had told staff
to advise customers to wait ten seconds before drinking. This
waiting time was found to be entirely baseless and insufficient.
(08:40):
The judge said the bar had been too cavalier and
failed to follow warnings about the dangerous chemical. Doctor John Ashton,
Cumbria's director of Public Health, described a scan one as
the victim of an irresponsible alcohol industry that's now competing
on gimmicks. He was perhaps being generous by implying the
industry was merely responsible, rather than actively attempting to discover
(09:03):
creative ways to hospitalize its customers. England and Russia aren't
alone in the liquid and nitrogen hospitalization club. This is
depressingly an international phenomenon. In twenty seventeen, a thirty year
old man in Deli, India, learned an expensive lesson about
cocktail consumption at a trendy bar. The man who requested
(09:23):
to remain anonymous, presumably because guy who had his stomach
opened to like a book by drinking the wrong thing
is not how anybody wants to be known anyway. He
consumed a cocktail with white smoke flowing from it without
waiting for the nitrogen to evaporate, then experiencing discomforts, but
chalking it up to acid reflux, he accepted and drank
(09:43):
a second one. Within seconds, his stomach began to swell.
He developed extreme pain and difficulty breathing. He was rushed
to Columbia Asia Hospital in Gergawn, where doctors performed emergency surgery.
His stomach, according to the surgeon, doctor amit Deep Tagaswami,
us open like a book. The tear was so large
that it could not simply be stitched back together. The
(10:05):
tissue near the perforation was too damaged. Doctors removed the
damaged portions of his stomach and connected what remained to
his small intestine. He spent three days on a ventilator
before regaining consciousness. Consuming liquid nitrogen can cause havoc in
a person's system, Doctor Gazwami told reporters in what may
be the most understated medical assessment in the history of understatements,
(10:29):
the gas did not have an escape route. He said,
after the person consumed it and the sphincter closed. This
is what led to a perforation in his stomach. The
Dely case highlighted a troubling regulatory gap. While India's Food
Safety and Standards Authority permits liquid nitrogen as a freezing
agent in food manufacturing, where it evaporates completely before the
(10:49):
product reaches consumers, there were no clear guidelines for its
use in cocktails served immediately at the point of sale.
The substance was simply being poured and served without any
form safety protocols. The first recorded case of liquid nitrogen
ingestion in medical literature occurred in nineteen ninety seven when
a physics student in Massachusetts was demonstrating the Leidenfrost effect,
(11:13):
the phenomenon where a vapor layer forms between a liquid
and a much hotter surface, creating an insulating barrier. This
is why liquid nitrogen skidders across floors like a caffeinated
mercury droplet, and why some demonstrators have historically put liquid
nitrogen in their mouths and exhaled dramatic plumes of condensed
vapor without immediate harm. The keyword there is immediate. The
(11:36):
physics student accidentally swallowed some of the liquid nitrogen during
the demonstration and suffered near fatal injuries. The Leidenfrost effect
works very well at protecting surfaces, it works significantly less
well once the liquid is actively in your digestive system,
where your stomach lining is not particularly interested in supporting
(11:56):
a theatrical physics demonstration. This hasn't stopped people from continuing
the demonstrations. One physicist described in the journal article Boiling
and the Leidenfrost Effect how he used to put liquid
nitrogen in his mouth and exhale plumes vapor until the
liquid quote thermally contracted two of my front teeth so
severely that the enable ruptured into a roadmap of fissures. Quote.
(12:20):
His dentist, presumably after composing himself and resisting the urge
to ask why his patient was gargling with cryogenic substances,
convinced the physicist to drop the demonstration. Sometimes the most
important scientific discoveries are the ones that teach us to
stop doing something. Russia alone has seen multiple nitrogen incidents
(12:40):
in twenty twenty five, just months before the Moscow Christmas
Party disaster. In February twenty twenty five, a twenty three
year old woman at a corporate event at a culinary
studio in Saint Petersburg drank soda containing liquid nitrogen and
suffered an esophageal burn. The esophagus, it turns out, also
does not appreciate being exposed to substances cold enough to
(13:01):
freeze human tissue instantaneously. Russia appears to be conducting an
informal nationwide experiment on whether corporate parties can be made
more interesting through cryogenic beverages. The results so far suggest
they can, though not in the way anyone intended. Perhaps
the most disturbing chapter in the liquid nitrogen saga involves
(13:22):
a product marketed primarily to children, Dragon's Breath deserts. Dragon's
Breath is a frozen treat made from colorful cereal balls,
typically with a flavor similar to fruit loops, dipped in
liquid nitrogen and served in a cup. When placed in
the eater's mouth, the cold of the nitrogen combines with
the warmth of the mouth to release visible vapors, allowing
(13:44):
the person to breathe smoke quote unquote out of their
nose and mouth like a dragon, or like somebody making
a terrible decision, depending on your perspective. The product became
wildly popular on TikTok and Instagram, spreading through mauls, carnival
and fares across Asia and the United States. Children loved it,
of course. The US Food and Drug Administration did not
(14:07):
love it, of course. In twenty eighteen, the FDA issued
a safety alert warning that Dragon's Breath and similar products
marketed under names like Heaven's Breath and Nitro Puff had
caused severe and in some cases, life threatening injuries, such
as damage to skin and internal organs caused by liquid
nitrogen still present in the food or drink. Reports documented
(14:30):
difficulty breathing after inhaling the vapor, and injuries to skin
and internal organs from handling or eating these products. In Florida,
the boy suffered an asthma attack after consuming Dragon's Breath.
His mother, Rachel Richard McKenney, wrote on Facebook that her
son nearly died after his airways constricted from the cold vapor.
They had to drive to a fire station where he
(14:52):
was given life saving treatment. Please, if you know someone
that is even just a mild case of asthma, do
not let them have this snow. She wrote. I should
have known better, but it did not occur to me.
That this food could have this effect. As a result,
my son could have died. In Pensacola, Florida, a fourteen
year old girl went to the hospital after burning her
(15:13):
hand while eating Dragon's Breath. In Indonesia, the problem became
widespread enough that the Ministry of Health issued a public
warning in twenty twenty three after more than twenty five
children were hurt consuming Dragon's Breath candies, including two who
were hospitalized. One four year old boy in Jakarta was
admitted with severe stomach pain. A child in East Java
(15:35):
suffered cold burns on his skin. The ministry urged parents, teachers,
and local health authorities to educate children about the dangers,
presumably because don't eat the thing that's so cold that
can instantly freeze your internal organs is not an intuitive
concept for most elementary school students. The FDA's recommendation was straightforward,
(15:55):
avoid eating, drinking, or handling food products prepared with liquid
nitrogen at the po to sale immediately before consumption. But
this advisory faced the same problem as most sensible health recommendations.
It requires people to know about it before they make
the decision. Its advising against liquid nitrogen doesn't just destroy stomachs.
(16:16):
Given sufficient opportunity, it'll destroy pretty much anything. On January twelfth,
two thousand and six, at approximately three am, a liquid
nitrogen tank at Texas A and M University decided to
demonstrate exactly how much force six hundred ninety six to
one expansion can generate. The tank in question was about
twenty six years old and had at some point been
(16:37):
modified by persons unknown. The pressure relief devices safety mechanisms
specifically designed to prevent exactly this sort of catastrophe had
been removed and sealed with brass plugs. Without these safeguards,
pressure built inside the tank until it reached approximately twelve
hundred psi. Then the bottom blew out. The force of
(16:58):
the explosion was sufficient to prepare the tank through the
ceiling immediately above it. It shattered a reinforced concrete beam
directly below it. It blew the walls of the laboratory
point one two point two meters off their foundations. It
turned the tile floor within a five foot radius into
quarter sized pieces of shrapnel that embedded themselves in the
walls and doors of the lab. The floor cracked, but
(17:20):
held barely thanks to the supporting beam, which was destroyed
In the process, the tank minus its bottom, rocketed through
the concrete ceiling and into the mechanical room above, where
it was stopped only by a water pipe. Had anyone
been in the laboratory at three am, they would very
likely have been killed. The university's accident report noted with
(17:42):
impressive understatement that without these two safeguards in place, it
was only a matter of time until an explosion occurred.
The Texas A and M incident was a laboratory accident.
The twenty twenty one disaster in Gainsville, Georgia, was something
far worse. January twenty eighth, twenty one, a liquid nitrogen
leak at Foundation Food Group's poultry processing plant killed six
(18:06):
workers and injured at least a dozen others. The plant,
located in a city nicknamed Poultry Capital of the World,
used liquid nitrogen to flash freeze processed chicken. A bent
tube in an immersion freezer, likely damaged during maintenance, caused
the freezer to fill with an unsafe level of liquid nitrogen,
which overflowed and rapidly vaporized into a four to five
(18:28):
foot high cloud of nitrogen gas. Nitrogen gases odorless and colorless.
The workers had no warning. Three maintenance workers entered the
freezer room and immediately died of asphyxiation. Additional workers entered
to try to rescue their colleagues and also died immediately.
A sixth person died while being transported to the hospital.
(18:50):
The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board later determined
the deaths were completely preventable. Foundation Food Group had failed
to try treing employees on the hazards of liquid nitrogen.
Workers were not equipped with air monitoring or alarm devices
that could have warned them about the dangerous vapor cloud.
The company had allowed the position responsible for safety management
(19:12):
to remain vacant for over a year before the incident.
OSHA issued fifty nine violations and proposed nearly a million
dollars in penalties, with officials, including Labor Secretary Marty Walsh,
calling the six deaths entirely avoidable. The tragedy was made
worse by the fact that workers died trying to save
their colleagues. At least fourteen employees entered the freezer room
(19:35):
or surrounding area to investigate or attempt rescues. They had
no idea that the invisible cloud they were walking into
was displacing all the oxygen in the air. In two
thousand and nine, a twenty four year old German chef
named Martin Anger learned that liquid nitrogen does not forgive
amateur experimentation. Anger was a fan of molecular gastronomy, the
(19:58):
culinary movement that applied scientific techniques to cooking, popularized by
celebrity chefs like Heston Blumenthal and for Ran Andrea. He
somehow obtained a canister of liquid nitrogen and decided to
try a recipe at his girlfriend's mother's house. This was
in retrospect, several poor decisions stacked on top of each other.
There was an enormous explosion. Anger's right hand was shredded
(20:22):
by the force of the blast. He was rushed to
the hospital, where doctors determined his left hand was so
badly injured it had to be amputated. He also suffered
serious injuries to his leg and genital area. His condition
was described as life threatening and he was placed on
artificial respiration. In a small miracle, surgeons were able to
reattach his left hand, though doctors estimated it would require
(20:46):
up to ten operations and that function would be restored
to only sixty to seventy percent capacity. When police arrived
to investigate the explosion, Anger initially claimed that he'd been
trying to fill a gas lighter. His girlfriend, and apparently
unwilling to cover for him, said he was trying to
empty a canister of liquid nitrogen for cooking. Liquid nitrogen
(21:08):
does not explode easily under normal circumstances. Investigators suspected the
explosion occurred because Anger sealed or pressurized the container in
some way, allowing pressure to build until catastrophic failure. This
is essentially the same mechanism that launched the Texas A
and M tank through a concrete ceiling, except Anger was
(21:28):
holding the container when it happened. The lesson here is
that liquid nitrogen belongs in professional kitchens with trained staff
and proper equipment, not in your girlfriend's mother's apartment while
you attempt to recreate a dish you saw on television.
The appeal of liquid nitrogen in cocktails is purely aesthetic.
It creates that smoky, mysterious fog effect that looks incredible
(21:53):
in photos and videos. It chills drinks faster than nice
ever could. It makes you feel like you're drinking something
from a science fiction movie. Which, to be fair, you
kind of are, although typically in science fiction movies the
characters drinking from smoking vessels are either villains or about
to be attacked by villains. When handled properly by trained professionals,
(22:14):
liquid nitrogen can be used safely in food and drink preparation.
Master mixologists typically swirl the liquid nitrogen around the glass
until it completely evaporates, then pour in the alcohol, which
retains a lingering mist. The key is that nothing is
served until the nitrogen has entirely transformed from cryogenic liquid
(22:35):
into harmless atmospheric gas. At that point, you're basically drinking
from just a very cold glass surrounded by dramatic visual effects.
The problem is that handled properly by trained professionals is
doing an enormous amount of work. In that sentence, the
theatrical appeal of liquid nitrogen tends to attract establishments and
(22:57):
performers more interested in the show than these safety protocols,
and the consequences of getting it wrong are catastrophic. Professor
Peter Barham of the University of Bristol's School of Physics
put it plainly after the Gabby Scanlon case, saying liquid
nitrogen can be used safely in the preparation of foods. However,
since it is not safe to ingest liquid nitrogen, do
(23:19):
care must be taken to ensure that the liquid has
all evaporated before serving any food or drink that was
prepared with liquid nitrogen. That seems straightforward, wait for the
thing that will destroy your internal organs to finish evaporating.
And yet John Emsley, a science writer and fellow at
the Royal Society of Chemistry, explained the physics to the BBC, saying,
(23:42):
if you drink more than a few drops of liquid nitrogen,
certainly a teaspoon, it would freeze and become solid and
brittle like glass. Imagine if that happened in the ailmentary
canal or the stomach. The liquid also quickly picks up heat, boils,
and becomes a gas, which could cause damage such as perforations,
or cause a stomach to burst. A substance so cold
(24:05):
it turns your digestive system brittle like glass, then immediately
converts to six hundred and ninety six times its volume
and gas while still inside you. Not exactly a recipe
for a fun night out. A substance capable of rupturing
human stomachs requiring emergency gastroctomies. Killing workers in industrial accidents,
(24:26):
and hospitalizing children would seem to demand heavy regulation when
used in food service, it doesn't. In the United States,
the FDA's twenty eighteen advisory about Dragon's Breath and similar
products was exactly that and advisory. It warned consumers to
avoid these products and recommended retailers cease selling them, but
(24:47):
it wasn't a ban. It wasn't even a formal regulation,
It was just a strongly worded suggestion. In the UK,
after the Gabby scanl in case, the Food Standards Agency
issued warnings about liquid nitrogen cocktails, but the cocktails weren't banned.
Bars are still free to serve them as long as
they take some care about it, though what constitutes adequate
(25:09):
care remains somewhat ambiguous. Interesting that the UK will ban
words and phrases considered politically incorrect, making it be legal
to use them, yet doesn't ban something that allowed right
to kill you if you consume even a few drops
of it. In India, the Food Safety and Standards Authority
permits liquid nitrogen as a freezing agent in food manufacturing,
(25:30):
but when the Deliman's systomach was perforated. In twenty seventeen,
officials acknowledged there were no clear guidelines for its use
in cocktails. Restaurant owners were using it for theatrical effects
without any formal safety training or protocols. In Russia, liquid
nitrogen cocktails are served at corporate parties with celebrity chefs
who apparently don't warn guests about the risks of consuming
(25:52):
cryogenic substances. The regulatory landscape is a patchwork of warnings, advisories,
and general assumption that people will figure out not to
drink things that can rupture their internal organs. This approach
has not been entirely successful. For the sake of clarity,
here is a recap of what we have documented about
liquid nitrogen consumption just in this episode, all of which
(26:15):
have been documented in news reports and medical literature. A
physics student in Massachusetts nineteen ninety seven accidentally swallowed liquid
nitrogen during a leidenfrost effect demonstration and suffered near fatal injuries.
The first recorded case of ingestion, A physicist cracked the
enamel on two of his front teeth by repeatedly putting
liquid nitrogen in his mouth to exhale vapor, creating a
(26:38):
roadmap of fissures. An eighteen year old in Lancaster, England,
twenty twelve had her entire stomach removed after drinking two
liquid nitrogen Yegermeister shots at a bar on a birthday.
A thirty year old man in Deli twenty seventeen had
portions of his stomach removed after drinking two liquid nitrogen cocktails.
Doctors described his stomach as open like a book. A
(27:00):
German chef two thousand and nine lost both hands in
an explosion while experimenting with liquid nitrogen at his girlfriend's
mother's house. One hand was later reattached. A liquid nitrogen
tank at Texas A and M University in two thousand
and six exploded through a concrete ceiling after someone removed
the pressure relief devices. Six workers in Gainesville, Georgia, twenty
(27:22):
twenty one died of asphyxiation when a liquid nitrogen leak
created an invisible cloud that displaced oxygen in a poultry
plant freezer room. A twenty three year old woman in
Saint Petersburg, Russia, February twenty twenty five suffered esofagial burns
from drinking soda containing liquid nitrogen at a corporate event.
A thirty eight year old man in Moscow, Russia, December
(27:43):
twenty twenty five, had his stomach ruptured by a liquid
nitrogen cocktail at a corporate Christmas party. Twenty five children
in Indonesia twenty twenty two through twenty twenty three were
hurt consuming Dragon's Breath candies, including one four year old
hospitalized with severe stomach pain. A boy in Florida suffered
a near fatal asthma attack after consuming Dragon's Breath. The
(28:05):
fourteen year old girl in Pensacola, Florida, was hospitalized after
burning her hand while eating Dragon's Breath. Multiple lawsuits have
been filed in the United States by individuals who suffered
burns or internal injuries from Dragon's Breath products at mals
and fairs. This list is not comprehensive. It's just what
I had time to share in this episode. These are
(28:25):
simply the incidents that made the news. The actual number
of liquid nitrogen injuries is certainly higher. Sergeys reportedly recovering
in the ICU, having survived a holiday party that very
nearly killed him. His stomach, though sutured, will presumably never
look at a smoking beverage. The same way. Again. The
celebrity chef who served the drink has not been publicly identified,
(28:47):
which is probably for the best, given that the chef
who ruptured a mand's stomach at Christmas is not a
title that inspires consumer confidence. Liquid nitrogen continues to be
legal to use in food service, despite a growing catalog
of perforated stomachs, removed organs, burned aesophaguy, exploded tanks, asphyxiated workers,
(29:08):
hospitalized children, and at least one physics teacher's permanently fissured
tooth enamel. The substance expands six hundred and ninety six
times its volume, has no warning properties like odor or color,
boils at negative one hundred ninety six degrees celsius, and
can cause tissue damage on contact. It is, in other words,
(29:29):
a uniquely terrible substance to pour into a paper cup
and hand to somebody at a party. But it does
make a really impressive fog. If you find yourself in
an establishment serving liquid nitrogen cocktails, the FDA's advice is straightforward,
wait for the nitrogen to fully evaporate before drinking. You'll
know it's evaporated when the bubbling has stopped. And there's
(29:51):
no liquid pooling in the bottom of the cup. If
somebody tells you to drink it immediately, don't. If the
bartender seems unsure about safety, pro order something else and
probably find another place to go drinking with your friends.
And if you're at a corporate party and a celebrity
chef hands you a smoking beverage, maybe just stick with beer.
(30:13):
Your stomach well. Thank you. If you'd like to read
this story for yourself or share the article with a friend,
you can read it on the Weird Darkness website. I've
placed a link to it in the episode description, and
you can find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange,
and more, including numerous stories that never make it to
the podcast in my Weird Darknews blog at Weird Darkness
dot com. Slash news and Happy New Year.
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.