The Carolina Reaper has been the undisputed world’s hottest pepper for over 4 years now, but its days at the top are numbered. There’s a new kid on the block and it’s apparently twice as hot as the Reaper. This is “Pepper X”.

Pepper X is the brainchild of Smokin’ Ed Currie, “founder, president, mad scientist & chef of PuckerButt Pepper Company”, and the same man who created the now world famous Carolina Reaper. Apparently, he started working on this scorching hot chilli some 10 years ago, crossing various pepper variety and constantly upping the Scoville rating, to the point where it now scores a mouth burning 3.18 million Scoville units. To put that into perspective, Jalapenos are rated at between 10,000 – 20,000 units, while the current Guinness record holder for world’s hottest pepper, the Carolina Reaper, scores an average of 1.6 million units on the Scoville scale. So it’s safe to say that Pepper X is pretty hot.

So hot in fact that consuming it raw is potentially deadly. The extremely high capsaicin content, the active component that produces a sensation of burning in any tissue with which it comes into contact, can send your immune system into overdrive and trick your body into thinking that it is experiencing real burning. For this reason, Pepper X is currently only available as an ingredient of the hottest sauce ever created, The Last Dab.

The sauce consists of Pepper X mash, distilled vinegar, ginger root, turmeric, coriander, cumin and dry mustard, making it very flavorful while only compromising on hotness. By itself, Pepper X comes in at 3.18 Scoville units, but The Last Dab sauce is still hotter than the Carolina Reaper, at 2.4 million units, and on par with the current unofficial world’s hottest pepper, Dragon’s Breath.

“Pepper X is three times hotter than any other peppers that are out there available commercially,” Its creator, Smokin Ed Currie, said. “It’s twice as hot as the Reaper at 1.6 million, so this is a dangerous pepper.”

According to Currie, but also those who have tried The Last Dab, Pepper X is special in that it gives you a false sense of security. It’s mildly hot at first, than the hotness in your mouth goes away for a while, fooling you into eating more of it, before coming back with a vengeance and making you regret ever trying it in the first place. Just watch this clip of Complex’s “Don’t Believe The Hype” to get an idea of how deceptive this little bugger can be.

Smokin’ Ed has already submitted documentation to the Guinness Book of Records to have Pepper X officially named as the hottest pepper in the world, and he estimates that the title will be awarded sometime in November.

The Last Dab sauce was only recently launched, but it is already a smashing success. The first 1,000 bottle batch was sold out in just two minutes of becoming available online, and it’s now only available for pre-order.