NOW, THAT’S HOT (SAUCE)

The “heat” of a chili pepper is measured in Scoville units, and Tabasco’s signature classic red hot sauce registers at 2,000. Now compare that to the following—some of the hottest hot sauces ever produced.

LETHAL INGESTION All the hot sauces on this list should be stored away from normal food items in your pantry, so a child or unassuming adult doesn’t mistakenly drench their tacos with one of them. To make you aware of this danger, CaJohns Lethal Ingestion Hot Sauce comes in a faux medicine bottle that looks like something a nurse would inject a syringe into. The label helpfully instructs, “Use only prescribed dosage.” It’s not a joke: Made with Fatalii chilies, Red Savina chilies, and Bhut Jolokia chilies, Lethal Ingestion is advertised as the world’s hottest hot sauce with no added extracts. That probably won’t mean much when your mouth explodes from the heat, which tops the charts at around 1.1 million Scovilles.

THE HOTTEST SAUCE IN THE UNIVERSE, THE SECOND DIMENSION Psychedelic drugs can help you feel like space and time is in the fourth dimension, but one drop of this hot sauce will have you in the second dimension…by knocking you flat on the ground with its 3.5 million Scovilles. Made by Pepper Palace, each batch of The Hottest Sauce In The Universe is made with 40 pounds of ghost peppers. That’s about 39.99 pounds more than anyone in their right mind should need to spice up a curry, but to each their own.

THE RAPTURE One drop of Torchbearer’s The Rapture sauce will have you wishing for the apocalypse. It’s billed as “THE HOTTEST NATURAL SAUCE IN THE WORLD!!!!” with 16 scorpion peppers per bottle (and four exclamation points). Just one scorpion pepper registers between 500,000 and 1.4 million Scovilles.

REAPER SQUEEZINS Hot sauce may be torture going in, but this brand advertises the less-than-enjoyable time you’ll have getting it out of your body. The PuckerButt Pepper Company’s Reaper Squeezins, which tops out at 2.2 million Scovilles, is made from founder Smokin’ Ed Currie’s signature Carolina Reaper peppers. If you want to grow your own batch, Smokin’ Ed will sell you the seeds.

MAD DOG 357 GOLD Ashley Foods is known far and wide for their insanely hot hot sauces, none more so than their Mad Dog 357, which will make you regret putting even a single drop on your tongue. The sauce itself is 1 million Scovilles, but it’s buttressed with “Scoville Plutonium Extract,” which kicks it up to more than 10 million Scovilles. The extract comes in a solid form and needs to be heated before it can be served. Proceed at your own risk.

Technical name for cat lovers: ailurophiles.