What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

by Randall Munroe

Destroying angel is a small, white, innocuous-looking mushroom. If you’re like me, you were told never to eat mushrooms you found in the woods. Amanita is the reason why.3 If you eat a destroying angel, for the rest of the day you’ll feel fine. Later that night, or the next morning, you’ll start exhibiting cholera-like symptoms—vomiting, abdominal pain, and severe diarrhea. Then you start to feel better. At the point where you start to feel better, the damage is probably irreversible. Amanita mushrooms contain amatoxin, which binds to an enzyme that is used to read information from DNA. It hobbles the enzyme, effectively interrupting the process by which cells follow DNA’s instructions. Amatoxin causes irreversible damage to whatever cells it collects in. Since most of your body is made of cells,4 this is bad. Death is generally caused by liver or kidney failure, since those are the first sensitive organs in which the toxin accumulates. Sometimes intensive care and a liver transplant can be enough to save a patient, but a sizable percentage of those who eat Amanita mushrooms die. The frightening thing about Amanita poisoning is the “walking ghost” phase—the period where you seem to be fine (or getting better), but your cells are accumulating irreversible and lethal damage.