The World's Hottest Hot Sauces

The hottest hot sauces in the world are sometimes not even classified as food. They can approach such a high level of capsaicin, the substance that makes a pepper hot, that they are placed in the category of "self-defense material." Tasting the hottest hot sauce can leave a person with pain for several hours or even days, so the hot sauces featured in this guide should only be tried by adults or under adult supervision.

With the proliferation of the ghost pepper, bhut jolokia, and other super-hot peppers, the art of making super-hot hot sauce is truly taking off. From "Nothing Beyond" to "Sudden Death," mega-hot sauces have started to get, well, hot. We can't say we have tried all of these, or even that we want to, but for those of you who are curious about the absolute hottest hot sauce in the world today, this lens will get you started on your voyage of painful discovery. Some of these are not even technically food! So proceed cautiously, watch some of the videos, and decide for yourself if you want to try any of these super-hot peppers.

At one million Scoville Units, Magma hot sauce is beyond hot -- it's a destructive force, as these two gentlemen discover when they try it for themselves. Beyond adding flavor, Magma adds an unbelievably intense level of hot sauce pain.

Named after an animal famous for taking on poisonous snakes like cobras -- and winning. This is an all-purpose habanero sauce intended for at-the-table flavoring, but needs to be handled carefully. Keep away from children and your grandma, unless she's tougher than you, which she may well be...

At four million Scoville heat units, Z Nothing Beyond Hot Sauce is one of those sauces that is not really a sauce -- it's more correctly classified as a food additive, and should by no means be brought to the table. A drop in a pot of chili will make a difference you can taste. As the company says, "use responsibly. It will not kill you, but you will wish it did." You may well ask why this product exists, since it really isn't a food or a sauce at all. But buy a bottle and put it out once in a while -- it makes a great conversation starter.

Cool Million Ultra Hot Sauce is advertised as a food additive only, meaning that it has no real flavor per se -- just a blast of capsaicin so powerful it could literally hurt you. Checking in somewhere between military-grade pepper spray and the dreaded "three-pot" pepper that can spice three big pots of food at one time, this substance is strictly for Superman and fools. Keep it around for cooking up large pots of soups and chilis, but keep it away from the table, where someone might mistake it for a condiment.

It's a little confusing that this product is packaged as a food, or packaged at all, since it is pure capsaicin -- a chemical compound produced by some plants as a means of defense against insects and animals that might eat it. As the label says, "That's it. The race is over. It's chemically impossible to get any hotter!" Inside this admittedly good-looking bottle is a 1ml pharmaceutical grade vial filled with this Pure Capsaicin Crystal. Blair's offers this and several other pure or near-pure capsaicin products in limited edition releases.

Blair's Mega Death Sauce is another super-hot product from Blair's. They sure know their way around a near-fatal dose of pure capsaicin crystals! While you and I may know Megadeth as one of the original thrash metal bands, Blair's knows it as another version of their nearly unbearably hot hot sauce. You may want to keep this one away from the table, where it could fall into the wrong hands -- or one of your inebriated friends could decide to try to impress his date.

This many Scoville units should be enough for anyone, but as super-hot hot sauces go, this one is actually on the mild side. That said, please do not buy this product and treat it like a bottle of pepper sauce from the grocery store! Because it's not -- it's a seriously hot sauce for connoisseurs only.

Is Wanza an actual person? Our sources point to "no," but the hot sauce that bears her name is real -- and real hot. This hot sauce claims over 2 million Scoville units, which would put its punch somewhere around pepper spray. It claims to be "slightly hotter" than Z's Nothing Beyond sauce, which kind of makes that product's name meaningless, no? Consume Wanza's Wicked Temptation Sauce at your own peril.