I Survived the “Destroying Angel” (2006) | Hacker News Reader

I Survived the “Destroying Angel” (2006)

blog.mycology.cornell.edu

210 pointsrococode184 comments

I grew up in Russia, and like in many other Slavic cultures, mushroom foraging was a time-honored family affair. Some of my fondest memories are of picking mushrooms with my grandmother, who taught me all I know about identifying them. I still forage them all the time here in the States.

I'm sorry, but it continues to baffle me how someone can mistake an Amanita for a Coprinus (or Agaricus). To my eyes they're as different as a bottle of milk and a bottle of Drano. I suppose I can see how very young specimens of Amanita can resemble other varieties, but then you can follow a simple rule: if it looks remotely like a baby Amanita... don't take it! There are plenty of other mushrooms that are virtually unmistakable.

And then the idea of not double-checking what you foraged before cooking and eating it? That's... unconscionable. I've been foraging for 30+ years, and I still examine each individual specimen before putting it in the pot.

It's a shame because these kinds of stories create unnecessary fear in Americans about picking things from the wild, when there are so many great tastes and experiences right there at your fingertips.

> It's a shame because these kinds of stories create unnecessary fear in Americans about picking things from the wild, when there are so many great tastes and experiences right there at your fingertips.

To be fair, until we have better tools to diagnose and treat the tick-borne illnesses that are prevalent in the US, it still isn't the safest hobby. This year I finally got sick of worrying about Powassan virus et al. so largely gave up spending time in the woods and just bought a road bike for outdoor time instead.

Odds are pretty low of getting a tick borne disease. I would assume they're even lower if you take precautions. About 60000 incidents a year. Powassan virus 33 incidents (https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/data-summary/index.html)

I would speculate that more than 33 people manage to kill them selves road biking each year, but I confess I'm just guessing.

60,000 reported cases, which means more like 600,000 estimated cases. You can definitely vastly lower the risk if you take all the right precautions, but most people I see don’t even have their pants tucked into their socks.

And even if I ask a doctor to remove a tick he discourages a test of the dead tick, because „nothing would turn up anyways“. This supports a high rate of unnoticed cases.

Maybe they understand how miniscule the risk is and can't be bothered?

Depends on where in the US. Lyme's disease from ticks is very rare in some parts of the US.

That's... one of the worst excuses I ever heard to not go out into the wilderness. How can you ever sit in the car for example?

Pretty much!

> when there are so many great tastes and experiences right there at your fingertips.

As someone who has cooked with exactly one kind of mushroom (button) I find this intriguing. I thought all mushrooms taste more or less the same. I may have eaten something at a restaurant, but don't remember anything unique.

They taste wildly different. Just like not all fruits taste the same. Or all veggies. Or all meat.

My personal favourite is Chanterelle. Yellowfoot is pretty great too.

It's the only kosher mushroom.

Any way you can expand on this? What would make a mushroom non-kosher?

It has lowest change of having worms inside which are not kosher. Most other mushrooms needs checking if it's not worm-eaten.

Button are the most bland 'tasting' mushrooms, but you can find them in any shop because they are easy to grow in artificial conditions. There are so many quite strong tastes in the mushroom world, that some were/are used as spice. But its same as with forest fruit - those growing in wilderness have much stronger taste.

The strongest ones I would say are morel and of course truffles which are used for finest (and most expensive) delicacies, but many others which are more common are great too.

To experiment, find some chanterelles, lobster or porcini, and shitake mushrooms. These should be available fresh or dried in many large groceries in bigger cities. Make some dishes with each or try a taste.

Huge huge differences in mushrooms.

My favs are chanterelles, chicken of the woods, and candy caps (which have a distinct maple/sotolon flavor).

Part of the reason some people think mushrooms taste the same is because many common supermarket mushrooms in the west do taste similar.

In particular, three of the most common western supermarket mushrooms (button, cremini, and portobello) are actually all the same species (Agaricus bisporus). They just look different.

Shiitakes are a different species and do taste different, but are somewhat related; at one point in the past they were classified in the agaricus genus.

Once you venture outside those, tastes and textures rapidly diverge. Truffles and morels are definitely memorable if you've never had them before.

I think it really helps to be taught by someone who knows what they're doing. Where I live (Poland) it's common to have this knowledge passed down in families. I wouldn't dare to pick up anything based on a picture in a book.

There are apps that lead you through a series of questions (pores/gills, cap shape, etc) to try to identify a mushroom. App + book + internet for anything that is remotely uncertain is a pretty good avenue if you don't have anyone to teach you. And yes, it's crucial to inspect every single mushroom before eating it and discard anything that one isn't 100% sure about.

Hm, I was already starting to think about some sort of portable chromatography kits to identify toxins in the field, but I guess your solution works too.

Have you ever used bird identification apps like that? I would never in a million years trust an app to tell me what is safe to eat. To learn? Yes. But not to eat.

Quite a few delicious and safe Amanita spp. out there. It's a genus to be careful in, but there are a number of species that can be eaten with a little experience. Amanita calyptroderma and A. vaginata for instance.

Agaricus could be confused with white amanitas if they miss the capsule or the annulus (capsule is the biggest danger sign). Or a parasol with a A. pantherina. TBH, even the distinct Coprinus comatus could be confused by a beginner to another ink cap that could be really nasty if eaten with alcohol. I guess mushroom hunting requires a lot of common sense, perception and experience, which a lot of people lacks to some degree.

Agree. I usually avoid picking Russula because sometimes Amanita may lose their crown and look like Russula.

I found myself foraging for these bright orange lobster mushrooms off a scenic trailhead in Oregon.

They were quite delicious!

Mushroom foraging was common in my family and the ruleset was quite simple – we learnt this as children:

- you have to know a mushroom, that you want to eat, by 100%. You not only have to know the appearance in all possible states (young/old, colour variations, environmental context) but also you have to know the lookalikes and how to differentiate. The point here is: NEVER follow any generic rules (like avoid mushrooms with this or that feature), but reliably identify the type you want to eat!

- to learn to absolutely positively identify a mushroom therefore takes a lot of time. In my childhood I learnt about a dozen edible types, that I would dare to eat. And this knowledge only applies to the geographic region I lived. The same mushroom might have other lookalikes in other regions.

- if there is the slightest doubt, do not eat it.

- when picking, make plausibility checks. For example: does the sample fit to the environment?

- if you have trouble to differentiate a potentially edible mushroom from its lookalike, avoid both.

- if there is the slightest doubt, do not eat it.

- as long as you are learning a new type, do not eat it. If you pick one to examine at home, keep it separated from the others. Buy samples from the market for comparison.

- when you are sure that you have learnt a new edible type and that you can absolutely identify it, pick one. Double check with the books, when at home. Ask someone else for reassurance, if possible.

- When still sure: prepare one very small sample together with the other mushrooms and only for one member of the family (in my case, that would usually be my father). Observe for reactions for at least 24 hours. If everything is fine, repeat with a somewhat larger ratio the next time. Do so one more time and if everything is still fine, that type would be approved for family use. As a child, it was always a little exciting, not to say creepy, when father tried a new type. But never anything happened of course.

- Some mushrooms only become edible with certain preparation. Make sure to know them. My family would usually avoid those.

- if there is the slightest doubt, do not eat it.

Yeah something along those lines, apart from testing new stuff (god knows how long some toxins take to manifest or how strong they are, why risk life/health for few bites). We knew around 10+ of types that grow around us and all their variations, didn't touch anything else.

It is a wonderful activity, hike in dense forests for hours, coupled with treasure hunt that you can eat afterwards (or dry for later). Great for kids too.

The thing is, when I moved to Switzerland, the amount and types of mushrooms changed dramatically, for the worse in this case. Alps around here seem to be pretty desolate place, and of those mushrooms I can find most are not known to me, so big no-no. Funny how things can change dramatically when you move only 1500km.

The worst people are those that collect all mushrooms they see and then they study them at home. We used to make fun of big city dwellers for this. But this approach is dangerous - not only is there unnecessary destruction to beautiful fungus that will be just thrown away, but also eating something that was touching / has bits of death cap on it cap ain't the brightest idea. Plus without expertise, many edible mushroom might look very similar to dangerous ones.

One of the reasons I never dared to pick up magic mushrooms in the wilderness - they are too similar to some poisonous ones back home. Not worth the risk, not unless I would know all variations of them by heart.

"[...]apart from testing new stuff (god knows how long some toxins take to manifest or how strong they are, why risk life/health for few bites).[...]"

In our case, the procedure - of course - was not to approve the edibility of an unknown type of mushroom, but to approve the reliability of our identification of a well known and documented type. Somewhat over-cautious maybe, but better so.

"[...]It is a wonderful activity, hike in dense forests for hours, coupled with treasure hunt that you can eat afterwards (or dry for later). Great for kids too.[...]"

Yes! I miss it a lot. Mushroom foraging came to a complete halt after the Chernobyl desaster.

"[...]The worst people are those that collect all mushrooms they see and then they study them at home.[...]"

Or that would rip the mushrooms from the ground instead of cutting them properly...

Looks like a perfect task for a set of Deep Learning CNN models :)

>> The point here is: NEVER follow any generic rules (like avoid mushrooms with this or that feature), but reliably identify the type you want to eat!

There's a famous machine learning dataset (cited by at least 50 papers) where the task is to identify mushrooms as "definitely poisonous", "edible" or "not recommended (for eating)":

https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/mushroom

The following passage I quote from the UCI repository's mirror of the data agrees with your rule:

This data set includes descriptions of hypothetical samples corresponding to 23 species of gilled mushrooms in the Agaricus and Lepiota Family (pp. 500-525). Each species is identified as definitely edible, definitely poisonous, or of unknown edibility and not recommended. This latter class was combined with the poisonous one. The [Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms] clearly states that there is no simple rule for determining the edibility of a mushroom; no rule like ``leaflets three, let it be'' for Poisonous Oak and Ivy.

So that's just the mushrooms in two families, and there's no definite rule to identify them as poisonous or not. To be honest, I think I'll make up a rule on the spot: "if it's growing wild, I won't eat it" :0

Although it's not quite the same thing, this reminds me a bit of amnesic shellfish poisoning. In addition to all the terrible gastric problems ASP has the curious side-effect of severe permanent anterograde amnesia, where all memories before the incident are retrained, but the poisoned individual can't create new long term memories. So they're limited to working memory which only lasts a few seconds.

However research has shown that some specific types of long term memories can be still be made. For instance if an amnesiac individual is asked to draw the same image repeatedly, they may still improve in speed and efficiency without any apparent conscious memory of having drawn the image before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesic_shellfish_poisoning

Well you can add that to my list of horrifying potential outcomes of being human.

> For instance if an amnesiac individual is asked to draw the same image repeatedly, they may still improve in speed and efficiency without any conscious memory of drawing the image.

So it's basically a human version of cache timing attacks. O.o

>Well you can add that to my list of horrifying potential outcomes of being human.

Pretty much, fortunately it's very rare. However you shouldn't eat sport caught shellfish without first checking for local warnings regarding harmful algal blooms.

At least in the US/Canada all store bought Seafood is thoroughly screened for this specific problem, because ASP was discovered in Canada after a mass poisoning event in the late 1980s.

Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds was loosely based on an invasion of tens of thousands of delirious seabirds thought to be suffering with ASP in Santa Cruz in 1961.

If you're ever in SF and have a bit of an afternoon, the Marine Mammal Center, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, is a fantastic afternoon. It's free to wander about and tours cost ~$10/person. Perfect for an afternoon with the nieces and nephews. They cover ~600 miles of coastline on the western US, including Hawaii, and help with marine mammal rehab and study.

One of the KEY functions of the center is the monitoring of demoic acid in marine mammals, the cause behind Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning. Much like us terrestrial mammals, demoic acid is a heck of a terror for marine mammals too. When lots of seals and otters show up with high amounts of demoic acid in them, the Marine Mammal Center can issue alerts to local health officials to help us humans steer clear of seafood and to increase monitoring of the oceanic food chain.

As of this last weekend when I was there, they state that they have never seen such an outbreak of demoic acid poisoning on the west coast going back to about 1984.

The Marine Mammal Center is a fantastic place filled with great volunteers and incredible staff. Everyone there is super knowledgable and super dedicated to our oceans. If you have never been, it's a great time and perfect for the little ones. More info here: http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/

> "With early diagnosis, another experimental treatment includes massive doses of penicillin to stimulate the liver’s defenses."

The solution to fungus is... more fungus! Really goes to show the incredible breadth of this form of life.

How so? This is pretty much the same idea as an Irish petty king inviting in some Norman troops to show the other petty kings who's boss. (It turned out to be the Normans, of course.)

Penicillin works by killing other similar things.

Sort of a "hair of the dog" (except it's another dog species)

Some mushrooms kill you, others save your life, and yet others expand your mind. It's subjective, but I consider it incredible.

In other words, they're all edible. But some of them only once.

Edible does not mean "can physically be eaten" it means "is safe to eat". So no, poisonous mushrooms are not edible.

There was a 50yo man in Lithuania that made bet that he will not die from Amanita phalloides (because scientist are hiding the truth etc.) as he didn't die from Amanita muscaria previous year.

So he died in 5 days.

https://www.15min.lt/naujiena/aktualu/lietuva/vyras-sumane-p...

> Penicillin works by killing other similar things

Pencillin is an antibiotic derived from fungi (Penicillium spp.). It kills bacteria. Bacteria and fungi are in two different kingdoms on the tree of life. These two groups of organisms are just about as dissimilar from each other as any two living things can be.

Other than they cohabit the same environments, hence why evolution/adaption has favoured the one that produces more bacteria toxin.

They live in the same environments and compete with each other for the same resources. Depending on your point of view, this is enough to make them more similar to each other than, say, lions and whales, which are both mammals.

Taxonomic closeness is only one kind of similarity.

Penicillin kills bacteria. The two are not similar at all! Nor is penicillin (a fungus) even remotely similar to a virus. Doesn’t stop people from taking them for any illness I guess.

I mean the main cure is milk thistle extract, I think the penicillin is/was just thought to potentiate it slightly if you can't get silbinin intravenously. In the U.S. it's still not FDA approved, so IIRC if you get poisoned you need to somehow get to Washington DC because that's where the clinical trial is happening.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00915681

Sorry, but this is just so irresponsible. I'm sure I'll be corrected, but it almost needlessly resulted in taking a liver away from someone that needed it not as a result of their own stupidity. Oh, and then while in an emergency room on the brink of death questions why the alternative medicine some friend found online was never used.

He doesn't explicitly say, but presumably what the doctors successfully treated him with was alternative medicine, just different alternative medicine. (Silbinin isn't FDA approved in the US.)

The ending almost reads like satire. He was picturing a happy, smiling liver and wonders whether it was that positive visualization or the massive doses of penicillin that did the trick? It’s like something from the Onion.

To be fair, I've watched a lot of people on the brink of death. (I was a paramedic for a time.) You could often tell the ones that would die despite very similar presentation to one's that would live. The difference was the ones that would live had fight in their eyes. You see that too with folks waiting for a loved one to get there before they die. They can push it back for hours or even days if they've got the fight to do it. They even teach that to rescuers in search and rescue: often people that have hung in for days fighting to survive see their rescue and then they relax and start going downhill fast.

Long story short, there definitely is something to your mental game in a situation like this.

It's a smaller effect than the others, but it's there.

Do you have anything i can read on the rescue stuff? This all might come in handy for when I'm dying one day.

May not be the same thing, but afterdrop is an issue with rescued drowning victims which can lead to Circum-Rescue Collapse which can lead to cardiac arrest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterdrop

I'm not sure if there is consensus on this but the adivce I was given for rescue scenarios is to keep the patient tense. Raising voice at them, increasing stress, telling them they are still in danger and need to keep fighting.

The author is not considering the efficacy of physiological factors. He is endorsing magic, prayer and amateur medical research as realistic alternatives to medicine.

He doesn't even seem that mollified to have done something stupid. Narcissist?

Probably just a regular idiot.

Yes. But I think it took a lot of humility to write that article, nevertheless. And willingness to acknowledge his own idiocy.

The act was foolish, but the self-reflection was brave.

In France, you can bring your wild mushrooms to any local pharmacy, and they will ID them for you as a free service. Seems like it would be a useful service to US foragers too!

How do all these pharmacists get trained in mushroom identification?

It's really not that hard if you only go after regular edible mushrooms. The entire mycology is impossibly broad but normal foraging is basically trivial. Pharmacists learn much harder things.

It's part of the curriculum. The most important thing for them though is to focus on mushrooms in their region not having encyclopedic knowledge... Still, some will refuse to provide this service if they don't feel confident.

In Switzerland this service is offered by the commune or canton. http://www.vapko.ch

All I can think is what a liability nightmare that would be in the US if a pharmacist made a bad call. For both the pharmacist and the company that employed them.

I grew up deep in the woods. Like any good mother, mine was a little over-protective; I was instructed to not even touch any mushrooms (or other fungus). Period. But if I did touch them, to wash my hands as soon as possible. To this day, I generally leave them alone. If I do pick one up while on a hike, I'll generally wash my hands with whatever drinking water I have on me.

Interestingly the toxin in the mushroom from the story apparently isn't absorbed through the skin.

But I probably would wash my hands too.

No mushroom exists in the world that can poison you through touching it. Even licking. Your body has to digest it.

Edit: I'm currently at -5 but this is a fact.

http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/BOT135/Lect17a.htm

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/studying.html#odortaste

https://www.reddit.com/r/mycology/comments/2ps3q5/are_there_...

Even if you touch it and then lick your fingers?

Yes, even if.

Source please.

There is literally only one known in the world (as linked above) - "poison fire coral" which is described[0] by a researcher as such: "Of the hundred or so toxic mushrooms that are known to researchers, this is the only one in which the toxins can be absorbed through the skin"

[0] https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2019/october/deadly-fun...

At least in the U.S. and Canada, there are no mushrooms where if a healthy adult nibbles on them to taste them and then spits them out, they will be anywhere close to the LD50. You might still get some minor liver damage or whatever, but not enough to kill you. This is as opposed to plants, where people have died just from putting water hemlock twigs in their mouths to play with.

There are a bunch of similar-looking species where the proper way to ID them to know if they're edible or not is actually to nibble on them and then just spit them out.

> At least in the U.S. and Canada, there are no mushrooms where if a healthy adult nibbles on them to taste them and then spits them out, they will be anywhere close to the LD50

LD50 is the dose that kills 50% of a test population. I don't think I'd try something if the only assurance I had that it was safe is that it is not anywhere near LD50.

> I don't think I'd try something if the only assurance I had that it was safe is that it is not anywhere near LD50.

Ever drink coffee or alcohol?

Keep in mind I'm definitely not saying it's safe, only that you're not going to die from acute toxicity.

Sure, if you ever consume an LD50 of alcohol you have a 1 in 2 chance to die.

Most people never drink a comparable amount though.

Wow I never even heard of hemlock before. Good to know!

There is one mushroom called the Poison Fire Coral that can poison through touch. It just made the news rounds for being found for the first time in North Queensland.

https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2019/october/deadly-fun...

Cool, so there is an exception of 1!

“If found, the fungus should not be touched, and definitely not eaten. Of the hundred or so toxic mushrooms that are known to researchers, this is the only one in which the toxins can be absorbed through the skin,” said Dr Barrett, a mycologist from the JCU Australian Tropical Herbarium (ATH) who specialises in the study of fungi.

Wow! So deadly, but so beautiful!

I love mushrooms!

Wow, that thing just screams "I'm dangerous, don't eat me!"

Though the contact symptoms are described as dermatitis, not gross toxicity. Still a good idea not to handle it.

I'm curious if parents still admonish their kids not to eat wild mushrooms.

The first time I was with a family friend and watched him pick and eat wild mushrooms, it was as if I'd discovered a new strain of magic.

Today, I'll eat chicken mushrooms if they look exactly like the ones I've seen before. Otherwise I'll pass.

I sort of feel like those killer whales that have to be taught by other whales that fish are food, as their pod specialized in seals or penguins.

> I'm curious if parents still admonish their kids not to eat wild mushrooms.

Absolutely. Really, eating anything you find in the wild is risky unless you’re completely sure what it is. (Wild strawberries are pretty easy to identify, for example.)

On a 3 day backpacking in Wyoming trip I once ate a fist-full of Rubus phoenicolasius, thinking they were wild raspberries before I looked at the leaves and realized.... "those are not raspberries". Turns out they're fine...as anecdotal evidence shows... but now I'll generally conduct a thorough examination of the whole plant before eating anything; especially if I'm in a region in which I didn't grow up. When I'm home, I still eat all kinds of wild berries without really checking that thoroughly (strawberries, blueberries, cranberries -- both types, etc..).

More so after Into the Wild became a movie (not mushrooms)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mock_strawberry

They fooled me once. I picked and ate one, noticed it didn't taste right almost immediately. Once you look more closely, the fruit is quite obviously different in shape and texture, but the leaves are near-perfect and the fruit is the right color.

It certainly gave me a quick and fortunately danger-free reminder that there's a world of difference between "hey that looks like..." and "yes, after careful examination, this is...".

Did it taste any good on its own behalf? What a neat plant!

I used to hunt for these for fun when I was a kid. They taste plantish, nothing like real strawberries. But when you're bored and locked outside to keep you away from screens, they're fun to pick.

That’s crazy. Maybe strawberries aren’t as easy to identify as I thought.

> I'm curious if parents still admonish their kids not to eat wild mushrooms.

It depends on the culture

When I was younger, I was taught not to pick up or eat colorful mushrooms - the more colors they had, the deadlier they were, supposedly. At the time, I thought it made sense as the same rule applied for poisonous frogs.

After reading the article and looking at Wikipedia's list of deadly fungus species, I'm not so sure if that rule also applies to mushrooms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadly_fungus_species

A surprising number of people seem to think that. No correlation AFAICT. Some of the best mushrooms are colorful (eg. chanterelles).

Chanterelles are great because there are only 2 other mushrooms that are even close in resemblance and neither of them is particularly poisonous. One just tastes bad and the other will cause a stomach ache. They're also very easy to tell apart from the real deal even for a novice like me.

Harvested and ate a bunch a few weekends ago with a buddy. Delicious.

Word - I just foraged a bunch of them recently! Once you find them, more are usually nearby! Also, once you've had them on hand enough, it becomes easy to identify them with a very high degree of certainty.

Absolutely - like the perfect mushroom being super unique, and super tasty.

You mean Omphalotus olearius and Hygrophoropsis aurantica? First one could be very nasty, maybe not deadly but very painful. Easily possible to confuse with Cantharellus cibarius, See https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(15)00475-5/pdf

There are essentially no general hard and fast rules like that when it comes to mushroom hunting, there is no substitute for knowing how to positively identify specific species, where specific species should be growing, and knowing what distinguishes them from similar poisonous species.

I don't see why this could possibly get downvoted, it's absolutely true. If you do have a "hard and fast" rule in mind, it may work in your region but not in other places.

Besides the trivial rule of "pick no mushrooms", of course.

> If you do have a "hard and fast" rule in mind, it may work in your region but not in other places.

There are lots of hard and fast rules in different regions though that do work if you can ID the mushroom to genus. E.g. in New England, no green mushrooms in the Russula genus are poisonous.

We were taught to avoid white mushrooms, as in our area the poisionous ones you might mistake for edible ones are white.

Can someone give me a quick explainer on why it’s appealing to pick & eat ANY mushrooms in the wild at all? I’m probably just a dumb “city kid”, but I don’t see the appeal whatsoever.

I’d love to get some perspective on why folks enjoy this.

They are awfully tasty fried up with a little butter and it is fun to go for a hike and find perfectly edible, tasty food right there growing wild. As he mentions toward the end, practically no one gets sick from eating wild mushrooms. For instance in the SW United States there is really no way of mistaking anything poisonous for an edible puffball. Some people are more adventurous and will identify questionable mushrooms from a book, but then you’re really taking care not to eat something deadly and don’t proceed if you are not certain.

As a city kid who likes doing this, there are two aspects for me.

One is simply the game of going through the forest and carefully scanning the ground, looking at bunches of leaves - is that just leaves? Or a young mushroom just coming out? Then, when you do find a mushroom, checking if it's firm and good to eat, enjoying the alien aspect of the thing etc.

The other aspect is the wonderful taste of these. In my country we have porcini and chanterelle mushrooms in the wild, and finding some makes for an absolutely delicious breakfast the next day. You usually can't get fresh forest mushrooms any other way here, and in the rare occasions that you do find them, they are extremely expensive.

Morels are absolutely scrumptious. My partner and I buy them dried for $20 a meal in France, but it would be cool to be able to pick then in the woods :)

Awesome reply - exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much! That does sound quite cool :)

They're really tasty and good for you. There's also a deep primal satisfaction from eating something directly from the wild earth. It's also a long-standing tradition in many cultures.

If you know what you're doing and are very careful and cautious, it is a pretty low-risk activity.

The ratio of benefit to potential drawback seems unappealing though. There are plenty of other types of food that would fulfil that "deep primal satisfaction from eating something directly from the wild earth", and orders of magnitude more if you also include the sea.

I guess. But for many you learned from your parents or someone who knows and you usually pick a small subset that you are sure of

If you look at a page with our most poisonous mushrooms in Sweden: http://svampguiden.com/giftsvampar/lista/

and compare it with edible ones: http://svampguiden.com/matsvampar/lista/

As someone who rarely picks I would never pick a white mushroom for example because it is high risk even there are edible variants. However I'm sure when it comes to chanterelles and penny buns for example and those (+ one or two more) are plenty for me.

The benefit / drawback ratio for mushrooms is close enough to plants that it should be a non-factor. The real issue is familiarity. When you’re out in the woods, you’re surrounded by plants that are mostly inedible and often toxic. But you already learned that “most plants are inedible,” and you are familiar enough with the plants/parts that are edible to make it seem much less risky, since you ignore 90% of what you see before asking “can I eat that?” You don’t eat random berries; you stick to easily-recognized ones like raspberries or strawberries. You’ve been warned about poison ivy since you were a kid. Very few people eat the common herbs that are around because they don’t recognize them as edible.

Mushrooms are harder to find and less familiar. If you take a few hours to study up on one or two edible mushroom species (and their lookalikes, if they have them) you’ll find that it’s just as easy to positively identify them as it is an edible plant—which is to say, it’s not trivial but not too hard either. The defining characteristics are just different from what you’re used to looking for.

Chanterelles for example have a couple of lookalikes, but the real ones have ridges that run down the stem and not gills. Morels have a few lookalikes, but the real ones are hollow inside.

The differences between edible cow parsley and deadly water hemlock are IMO harder to spot than either of the above.

Great answer. Thanks!

Based on the bragging shortly afterward, I think in this case there was a bit of machismo involved.

You're more likely to get sick from restaurant food than forest mushrooms if you use common sense (eat only ones you are sure about, and learn from books/grandma how to be sure, try figure out / photograph the mystery ones before throwing away).

I only pick the "best" ones around here (Chanterelles, boletus), and those happen to be risk-free because of how they look. I don't pick mushrooms where I'd need to use my judgement to decide whether it is deadly or delicious. It's also very few that are this toxic, and I don't know of anything I'd like to pick that even resembles it (I'd never pick a white mushroom, for example - and that alone lets me dodge the deadly one).

Of course if one doesn't enjoy being in the forest, and don't enjoy eating the mushrooms - there is little point to it.

Careful. Chanterelles has 2 lookalikes, one is poisonous (Jack o lantern)

Luckily they are even harder to mix up in Europe where the jack-o is both rare and differently colored from the american one which is quite similar to chanterelle in color. Also since the jack-o has real gills (unlike a chanterelle) you’d need to be really sloppy to miss it. It’s not extremely toxic - you risk becoming sick, not dead.

For a more positive outlook on why people get enthusiastic about mushrooms, I recommend the amazing book "All That The Rain Promises And More...", which has probably the best cover of a non-fiction book I've ever seen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_That_the_Rain_Promises_and....

The link is missing a period at the end (should be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_That_the_Rain_Promises_and...)

Unless im in a cow field and looking for a certain easily identifiable party mushroom, I leave the mushroom foraging to the experts.

Almost every year, I read an article about a family (usually from Eastern Europe) that was picking mushrooms and misidentified an amanita as somethign they recognized from their home country. THey usually end up at UCSF (world-class transplants) and it's typically the kids who are affected the most.

That happens here in Australia.

What looks very much like an edible mushroom from Asia or elsewhere can be poisonous.

And vice versa.

I am surprised this mistake is possible. Inky caps don't look anything like Amanitas of any kind, IMO.

I am assuming that the author doesn't drink alcohol, otherwise Inky Caps aren't so great either (though not generally fatal).

They look a lot more similar when they are a bit earlier in the life cycle, I think

If anyone wants to start eating wild mushrooms and doesn't want to poison themselves I recommend this approach:

1. Choose one edible mushroom species that is often found in your region and is difficult to mis-identify (ceps, giant puffballs, beefsteak, field mushrooms etc)

2. Get to know this species inside out and learn which species look similar to it, especially any poisonous species. Learn the visual differences.

3.Learn the diagnostic tests (spore prints, smell tests, color changes on bruising).

4. Go mushroom picking!

5. Don't eat anything until you've picked this species so many times that you have become expert in identifying it.

6. Start learning about a new species and repeat.

The thing that was most frustrating for me to read was the 30 minute wait at the hospital to even be registered and diagnosed. (in the critical -- I assume -- first hours when the thing is making it's way into your bloodstream)

In a situation like that, I like to tell myself at least, I would loudly and firmly say, "I've been poisoned, time is of the essence, can you please stop what you're doing and help me, this is urgent!"

There is no antidote for Amanita poisoning, so treatment is entirely supportive. Drinking that liter of charcoal 30 min earlier would not have made a perceptible difference, given that the author's body was already busy expelling at both ends.

Personally I was more astonished that it took him over five hours after the symptoms started to get himself medical attention, even though he himself realized it was likely Amanita poisoning!

Triage is a thing.

Immediate life-threatening conditions, usually circulatory or pulmonary, gross trauma, overdose, get immediate priority.

Conditions progeessing over days or even hours, not so much.

When you / loved ones walk up and are immediately admitted, be concerned.

The author seems highly irresponsible. You don't just play around with mushrooms that you pick yourself from the woods - and you especially not cook / eat them, without double / triple checking them. When you are in doubt - you simply avoid eating them and taking risks. What happened to him is 100% his fault and was easily avoidable, I cannot have sympathy for that.

While everyone's commenting about how foolish the author was with his choices, I think the main point point is that this is a very well written chronicle of facing certain but not immediate death and what that feels like, down to the minutiae at the hospital.

Not directly related but mushroom-guru Paul Stamets recommends against eating Portobello mushrooms or -if you eat them- at least cook them very very well. Paul doesn't dare to go into too many details regarding this mushroom though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPqWstVnRjQ&t=6300s

Also, Enoki mushrooms should prevent some cancers as was seen in Japan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPqWstVnRjQ&t=6495s

Is there an app for mushroom ID? Seems like a no brainer now-a-days. Foraging is coming back with the kids. Could probably raise 80M from it, especially if you invent a social networking aspect around foraging.

If geographical spots for mushroom foraging find their way into social media, there will be no mushrooms in the forests next year.

Mushroom foraging is actually a pretty secretive thing – for a reason!

Would you really want people to blindly trust that? Like the posted article image recognition might falsely consider a deadly mushroom to be harmless, suddenly you've got potential deaths on your hands.

There are apps but you should not use them as they are dangerously inaccurate. Mushroom identification requires numerous different factors that a simple photograph would not be sufficient for a positive id.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatoxin

Amatoxins are one of my favorite chemical structures, so beautiful.

Genuine question, why so?

Just the beauty of the circle arrangement and then boom plops the Tryptophan down right in the middle and links both sides.

The effect doesn't seem to be so beautiful...

> Because it inactivates the RNA polymerases, the liver is unable to repair the damage that beta-amanitin causes and the cells of the liver disintegrate and the liver dissolves.

If you're ever uncertain of a mushroom you can take a spore print to help. Say you have some in your yard and worried about a pet or child.

It's very vague sometimes trying to identify a 'typical' looking mushroom.

But if you just place the cap on a piece of paper, and cover it overnight you'll be left with a sporeprint(think like a mushroom finger print).

The color can help you narrow down a vague search.

Huh:

"I mistook them for inky caps [...] even though I spotted an Amanita nearby [...] I should have been more suspicious as mushrooms do grow in colonies."

"I couldn’t find my Mushroom book, was in a hurry, so I trusted my judgment, fried them up in olive oil, and ate them as a side dish."

"I should have recognized then that they weren’t inky caps, because inky caps exude a black substance when you fry them."

"At that point, I got concerned. I covered it up by saying, “I’m OK, I know what I’m doing and I don’t feel sick.”"

That's... a lot of interesting decisions, for something potentially so deadly. Had I known this person afterwards, I think I might have politely declined any dinner invitations.

I found interesting that he closes his post with an excerpt about how safe mushroom picking is, and how adverse outcomes only happen to ignorant fools who know nothing about mushrooms and don’t bother learning.

In an article that opens with “here is a list of things I know and books I read, and here’s how I poisoned myself anyway.”

Because he got himself poisoned right when he ignored everything he knew should do.

Yeah. And after my quotes above, the author notes that even after realizing that the intense sickness is likely related to the mushrooms, they still kept denying it.

But they do find time in the article to pass some judgment on "busy" "city" folks and their presumed inability to endure silence. Even though that's a different kind of "judgment" than the kind demonstrated above, I find it somehow hard to be receptive to it... 8)

And instead of thanking the doctors for their heroic effort, he credits his woo-woo "visualization" techniques.

That was in the section wondering why he survived but the other 2 people in the same hospital didn't. Would those 2 people have gotten different doctors or gotten less effort from the doctors?

"I found out that of three people admitted in 2006 to Strong Memorial with Amanita poisoning, I am the only one to have survived; 66% died."

The death rate for Mushroom Poisoning in the US was apparently something like 2.9 per year since year 2000.

He's really just discounting the 99.something% who survive for effect because two died in the hospital he was at. If that is even true.

> "the 99.something% who survive"

For this mushroom, it's certainly worse than that. It seems likely to me somebody quoted him the "without medical attention" survival rate.

> "Mushroom poisoning is more common in Europe than in America.[71] Up to the mid-20th century, the mortality rate was around 60–70%, but this has been greatly reduced with advances in medical care. A review of death cap poisoning throughout Europe from 1971 to 1980 found the overall mortality rate to be 22.4% (51.3% in children under ten and 16.5% in those older than ten).[72] This has fallen further in more recent surveys to around 10–15%.[73]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_phalloides#Similarity_...

That doesn't change the point that he ended up in the same hospital that by chase had >2/3 of the total number of related deaths in the country.

The people dying was the outlier

Mushroom poisoning and Amanita poisoning are very different things.

It's not like the doctors, nurses, and other staff are at liberty to release medical information about the other patients he encounters. So all he heard, at best, were anecdotes.

Mistaking Amanita virosa for inky caps is like mistaking a grapefruit for a pear. I don't understand how you can make this mistake if you have even minimal mushroom foraging experience.

When they are small, and if you only go by your own memory I'm sure it can happen...

"Destroying angels are sometimes mistaken for edible mushrooms such as young puffballs, button mushrooms, and meadow mushrooms."

https://www.mushroom-appreciation.com/death-cap.html

I mean all of those at least look vaguely like amanitas in their full or immature form. Whereas inky caps look NOTHING like amanitas in any form.

It's more like confusing a grapefruit with a kitten or something.

Actually, it looks like a common sort of decision tree that a normal person goes through when they have a medical problem.

And it is the same sort of decision tree people go through when nothing is wrong.

How many times have you heard a friend say "my heart behaves strangely sometimes".

Sometimes I have heartburn, or sweat more that expected and I wonder...

So when you have unexpected heartburn or excessive sweating, is that also after you picked a mushroom that you knew (or thought) looked similar to a very, very deadly one, with more than one indication that the one you ate was likely not the harmless one you mistook it for?

no, I meant in relation to a heart attack.

> That's... a lot of interesting decisions, for something potentially so deadly

The thing with bad decisions is, most of the time, they work out OK, until they don't. This gives people a false sense of confidence, which makes a eventual downfall more surprising to them.

Every drunk driver who causes an accident has driven drunk hundreds of times before without causing one. They think they drive better drunk than most people do sober. They get away with it many many times, until one time they don't.

The same rule applies to the lab technical who doesn't wear proper PPE, the researcher who doesn't double-check their Excel formulae before sending the paper for publication, etc.

I recommend /r/mycology for all your mushroom identification needs.

> I found out that of three people admitted in 2006 to Strong Memorial with Amanita poisoning (...)

Three people poisoning themselves in the span of one year in a particular region sounds like a lot.

Where I am from (Sweden) many, many people make mushroom picking a regular habit. However, most who do are aware of what mushrooms are safe, which ones to take extra care in identifying (definitely all white ones) and which ones to never pick. Wild mushrooms are perfectly safe as long as you have some knowledge about it. We were taught by parents and on school trips.

Most poisonous mushrooms also don't taste good and make you throw up quickly. (Our bodies have that vomiting mechanism for exactly that reason.)

Of course, most doesn't mean all.

Provided you don't assume that knowledge that works in Sweden works anywhere else in the world.

It doesn't - which is why a lot of people get sick in Sweden every year and it's heavily skewed to people who aren't Swedish. I'm not sure if it's because they lack knowledge entirely, or because the knowledge they had didn't transfer.

Few swedes would pick a white mushroom at all, and most would know that it at least shouldn't be white both on top and underneath because that's deadly.

That fits me, I just wrote a comment saying that while I feel very comfortable picking the standard 2-4 mushrooms in Sweden I would never try and pick a white one even if know we have some edible species.

> Three people poisoning themselves in the span of one year in a particular region sounds like a lot.

Mushrooms of any given species usually have mast years every few years in a given area, so when that happens it's not uncommon to have a bunch of people poisoned in an area in a given year. E.g. it happened two years ago in CA, and it happened in New England after Irene.

In the 40+ year history of amateur mycology clubs in the U.S. though no member of one has ever died from mushroom poisoning (although a few have come close). The victims are usually just toddlers grazing in the back yard, plus immigrants eating things that look similar to what they eat in their home countries.

Confusing Coprinus and Amanita is like confusing a zebra with a jiraffe. Totally different textures

> “ The thought that these guys might be trying to get my liver for someone else did cross my mind. I let it go.”

...but the thought that carelessness on your part may mean you take a liver from someone waiting for a long time on the transplant list didn’t?

The author seems to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible (referencing individual psalms by number), wears a cross around his neck to hospital, practises all kinds of eastern religious meditations (recommends "Awaken the Healing Light of the Tao" in the midst of describing himself in a diaper on a CAT scan machine). On top of this he works as a particle accelerator operator at cornell. And still eats some of the mushrooms he previously identified as growing next to some clearly poisonous mushroom colony.

At the end of the article he questions whether it was an act of god or meditation that saved him, yet concludes that realistically it was not taking the time to identify the mushrooms correctly which caused the whole process. Yet starts the article with the comment that he was somehow in an altered mental state from a "Aligning the Three Tan Tiens" exercise which left him feeling invincible. Surely if you belive that god or meditation was the cure, you would have to believe that they could also be the cause - especially in this case when you're doing the "nothing can kill me" meditation before picking mushrooms.

It's a weird half baked half-rational half-esoteric thought process that staggers me. Religion and science are always a controversial mix, but this is an extreme example.

I found it on the whole endearing. Through the author's religion we saw his valuation of his friends and family as well as his whole life. I think it's certainly within reason that people can believe contradictory 'truths' and I'm sure you do as well.

I'd make that point even stronger, humans don't tend to analyze their every thought with extreme care and I'd say _most_ hold some kind of contradictory believes. Or, believe something but don't actually act accordingly. (Cognitive dissonance)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Some contradictory beliefs, but the author is a walking stewpot full of contradictory beliefs.

Not the end of the world, but certainly remarkable.

Psalm 23 is the most famous one, so knowing it doesn't indicate an encyclopedic knowledge of the bible.

I know it's maybe even the norm, but I can't get my head around this disconnect between doing deep scientific work on the one hand and having such a profoundly mystical world view that seems to sometimes eschew rational reflections on cause-and-effect.

> Why did I live and the rest not live?

There are many factors at play. Among those not listed by the author are: age, genetics and biochemical happenstances, and pure random luck. Yet, the question seems to angle for a deeper meaning, as if to evoke the intent of a higher power who lets people live or die for personal or moral reasons.

> Was it the amount of toxin? Was it that I knew what had happened to me and sought care and help quickly?

Yes.

> Was it my meditation/visualization and somatic self care/self help practice?

It's been shown that a patient's determination and outlooks do have a noticeable effect on their outcome, so your mental framework may very well have helped here for reasons that are not related to specific practices themselves, but because they have a positive effect on your attitude.

> Was it the prayers of my friends and family and my faith?

No. And I would object to this even if I was a religious person. The idea that an all-powerful and infinetely wise entity, who decided on the fate of the entire universe well in advance, would change their mind and let someone live on account of the amount of fawning being performed on behalf of that person - that idea is both intellectually and theologically bankrupt.

> Was it the doctors’ care? One of them said it was a miracle!

Yes, it was the doctors' care, which was most likely necessary to save you. Using a throwaway utterance like this as evidence in support of a miracle-based world view seems self-deceiving.

If we're going to assign miracle status to improbable events, it should probably not be those that fall within the 20-50% range. The most disconcerting thing is that we would expect someone whose work involves particle physics to have a better grasp of probabilities, but I think once a person subscribes to the idea of a personalized universe that cares about the conduct of individual humans, a whole different set of rules suddenly comes into play.

On the subject of 'prayers from friends and family' being an intellectually and theologically bankrupt theory, here's a meta-study on the phenomenon.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cindy_Crawford/publicat...

That doesn't address my criticism of the premise. I chose to critique the assertions made of why prayer helps. You address the question of whether it helps. It's one of these "distance healing" prayer studies, and a meta-study at that. If you dig down into any of these data sources, you will find plenty of wishful thinking is involved in the design of the individual studies.

But again, whether you believe that it works or not, I wanted to move the discussion to address the claims of why it supposedly works. What I mean by "bankrupt" is the idea that people believe there is an omniscient superintelligence who actively controls the universe on a micro level and takes a direct interest in your personal life choices, who at the same time can be made to change its mind whenever enough people get together to praise it in a transparent attempt to beg for someone's life.

Even putting aside the obvious scientific problems with this concept, I call it also theologically bankrupt because - while it's not completely inconceivable that the universe works like that - it still flies in the face of what most religions portray their deities as.

There seems to be a deep misunderstanding of religion here.

"Prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend. Not that it is necessary in order to make known to God what we are, but in order to enable us to receive Him. Prayer does not bring God down to us, but brings us up to Him"

Just before giving His disciples the Lord's Prayer in the New Testament, Jesus says, "But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him."

Then the prayer itself follows up saying, "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen."

There's a lot of philosophy tied up in all of that (even for non-Christians). Most people who win the lottery go bankrupt in short order. If you aren't ready for a good thing, it can be destructive. Prayer is an acceptance that God knows what is best for the universe. It helps the person praying to become "in tune" with God's plan and accept that plan no matter if it is personally costly.

As you can see, "Begging for someone's life" is a very different mindset. The change in mindset from prayer's self-reflection can instill a positive outlook which improves medical outcomes. If the outcome is terminal, that same self-reflection can help a person reach acceptance and turn their remaining time into a more positive experience (and help with their loved ones after they have passed away).

That is all true even if there were nobody listening because they believe it to be true.

It's true that I lack a good understanding of religious thinking, thank you for helping out there.

> That is all true even if there were nobody listening because they believe it to be true.

I absolutely agree, whatever contributes to the patient's positive attitude helps. As does the involvement of friends and family. This is why I felt that I shouldn't criticize the perception of the overall effect so much, because I do agree that there is a positive mechanism at work here.

It is with the metaphysical aspects themselves where I have trouble, and in a sense that's how this whole thread got started because it seems a stark contradiction.

But coming back to your explanation, I agree, if your god wants to see signs of compliance from you and your social circle, it does stand to reason that people would believe this would cause him to intercede in the universe's processes in order to spare your life when he would not have seen the necessity to do so before.

SuoDuanDao's point then was that the idea that your god would change his mind on account of prayers is not theologically bankrupt (in hindsight this was a very poor choice of words by me) because it works. My thesis however, was that even if prayer works that doesn't mean the specific reasoning behind it is automatically valid.

> If we're going to assign miracle status to improbable events, it should probably not be those that fall within the 20-50% range.

It's telling, for example, that God never heals amputees.

This illogic is fairly harmless in the OP's situation--if his belief in a God makes him happy, good for him I guess. But a lot of my atheist friends have had serious accidents or illnesses where religious people have tried to use it as on opportunity to proselytize. "Hey, you survived X horrible event, don't you think that means someone was looking out for you?" Well, if someone is looking out for us, they're doing a crap job, or X horrible event wouldn't have happened in the first place. The last thing I want when I'm lying in a hospital bed in pain is to hear about your imaginary friend.

Although of course everyone can believe what they please, and I found myself in much sympathy with the narrator, in a couple of points I couldn't help thinking of a famous comedian's joke: "The doctors saved your life. But remember when you picked the wrong mushrooms? That was the act of God".

If I was as close to death as he was I think even I may become religious. Wouldn't have the encyclopedic knowledge of the bible though.

On the other hand I think that a Destroying Angel is one of the few mushrooms that I would know not to eat (my limited knowledge would also mean that I wouldn't actually eat any without positive identification). It's the second most poisonous after a Death Cap from what I know almost completely white.

This is a pretty uncharitable comment friend... presumably you aren't the intended audience for this article. Anyway, you've never met anyone like this before? I meet people like this all the time. They are much more interesting than those devoted to hyper-rational atheism AKA the Times New Roman of metaphysics. For one, these 'half-baked' types tend to be staggered by genuinely marvelous things, rather than just their perception of another person's incoherence.

If "hyper-rational atheism" were the "Times New Roman of metaphysics", you'd think it would be far more common than it actually is.

Going with your n=1 "I meet people like this all the time." theme, I know far more people of various religious flavors than I do atheists of any kind, "hyper-rational" or not.

No, I have never met a particle physicist that meditated his way into eating the notorious death cap and thanked god and spirituality for saving him.

I find it pretty sad that you'd preclude rational people from being able to experience genuinely marvelous things. I can tell you that there is a whole spectrum of rational thought, including both your hyper rational and 'interesting' people. I don't think you actually believe that these people live a myopic life of sterile scrutiny and flavorless examination.

The road is long my friend, and you have a distance to travel.

Your original comment was drawing generalisations about a certain character of thought from one person's experience. Obviously, I am not asking if you have met another particle physicist with this specific set of eccentricities.

Nor do I preclude anything about the scope or validity of someone's experiences, unlike your original comment.

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

There were three words missing from the article that are necessary for me to have taken the author seriously.

"I was stupid"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com