An online calculator can figure out exactly how much of your favorite energy drink / soda / coffee / etc. it would take to do you in via caffeine overdose.
Despite being a wonderful miracle worker, caffeine does have its side effects – it is, after all, a psychoactive substance. Along with warding off drowsiness and giving a quick burst of energy, caffeine can make us irritable and nervous, it can make us jumpy, and if taken in sufficiently high doses … caffeine can kill.
But how much of it would kill you? There’s a handy little calculator that aims to answer just that! It’s got quite the list of drinks and other substances, so put in your favorite caffeinated meal of choice and see how many you’d have to ingest in order to croak from caffeine overdose.
Here’s what I got:
Kit Kat bars – 2548 bars
Red Bull – 191.1 cans
Monster – 95.55 cans
Jolt Energy – 54.6 cans
Mountain Dew – 277.96 cans
Mountain Dew Game Fuel – 127.4 bottles
Starbucks Grande Caffe Mocha – 87.36 cups
Wired X344 – 44.44 cans
As we can see, it would take quite a bit of Mountain Dew – not to mention a veritable mountain of Kit Kat bars – to put me under. Mountain Dew Game Fuel is more lethal than Red Bull, but not as dangerous as Monster. A Starbucks Grande Caffe Mocha might be more caffeinated than those energy drinks, but it doesn’t have anything on Jolt. Even Jolt can’t stand up to Wired X344, though. A mere 45 cans of that stuff would do me in.
Caffeine is the gamer’s best friend – the concept that it could send us to the Great Arcade in the Sky seems almost like a betrayal, of sorts. On the bright side, though, the lethal dose of caffeine is so effectively high it’s not something we really need to worry about.
