The Indian Army just weaponized one of the world's hottest peppers. The newest biological weapon on the market is a homegrown substance for India: Ghost Peppers.
The army has been developing a flashbang-style grenade that harnesses the spicy power of the Bhut Jolokia pepper, one of the world's hottest peppers. The pepper, used by farmers mostly to keep elephants away, was one of the world's hottest peppers until 2007, when a race began to cultivate the world's new hottest pepper. The current champion is the Carolina Reaper.
The Ghost Pepper is now number seven on the list, but still packs a mean punch, as anyone unfortunate enough to have tasted it knows. To give some kind of reference to how spicy it really is, the habanero pepper has a Scoville rating of 350,000 units. The Bhut Jolokia has a Scoville rating of more than 1,000,000 units. Luckily, the burn of all of these peppers could only be felt if you were unfortunate enough to touch it.
The new weapon is pretty much a standard stun grenade with a spicy little addition. Inside are hundreds of ground-up Bhut Jolokia seeds. Once the flashbang goes off, the non-lethal grenade showers the area with baby powder-fine Ghost Pepper dust. Test subjects who were subjected to the Ghost Pepper grenade were blinded for hours by the powder. Some were left with problems breathing.
"The chili grenade is a non-toxic weapon and when used would force a terrorist to come out of his hideout," says R.B. Srivastava of India's Defense Research and Development Organisation. "The effect is so pungent that it would literally choke them."
The new weapon isn't designed to kill or be used in combat. The Indian government wants to use the Ghost Pepper Grenade as a crowd control device and for use during terrorist incidents. The powder in the grenades is also being considered as a self defense measure for Indian women to carry on the streets and as an elephant deterrent for Indian Army installations.
