25yo student blew off his jaw as chewing gum turned into a horrifying death sentence

In 2009, a Ukrainian student met one of the most grisly and senseless deaths ever caused by food. Vladimir Likhonos, 25, was found dead with his jaw blown off after a piece of chewing gum exploded in his mouth.

Unfortunately, these days Ukraine is dealing with different kinds of bombs from external forces, but in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Konotop, this tragedy was completely homemade. Likhonos was reportedly a chemistry student with an odd habit that would fit right into the kind of fare you’d typically see on TLC’s My Strange Addiction, where you find people addicted to eating tissue paper or even cockroaches.

For Likhonos, the habit involved dipping his chewing gum in citric acid to enhance its sour taste. On the night of the accident, he was at his desk in his parents’ home, working on chemical powders and experiments. According to Fox News, local investigators believe that during the night Likhonos mistakenly dipped his gum into the “wrong” chemical powder instead of his trusted citric acid — and that the powder he chose happened to be explosive.

Further investigation revealed that when he began chewing the gum, the combination of his saliva and the pressure from chewing turned it into a makeshift bomb. The blast was strong enough to blow off his entire lower jaw and the lower part of his face. Authorities arrived on the scene as quickly as possible, but Likhonos died on impact from the explosion.

The story went viral worldwide and was eventually featured on Spike TV’s 1000 Ways to Die. But, as was customary for the show, some details were fictionalized and the events were heavily dramatized. In the episode, they changed the name of the individual who died to “Jimmy Milliken,” portraying him as a “promising research chemist” who had turned into a meth addict.

In the dramatized version, aptly titled Jaw Boned, Milliken was depicted as a meth addict who stayed up for days working on experiments, surviving almost entirely on gum dipped in citric acid to maintain its flavor. In reality, Ukrainian authorities never revealed which chemical powder was involved. But as any fiction writer knows, the devil lies in the details, so the show decided that the chemical Milliken dipped his gum into was red phosphorus.

As the name suggests, red phosphorus is a red powder, while citric acid is a white powder. They look nothing alike to the naked eye — especially for a supposedly promising research chemist. That’s where meth comes in. If you were attentive during Breaking Bad rewatches, you’d remember that red phosphorus is a key ingredient in cooking meth. It wasn’t the best-written episode, and frankly it was a little insensitive, but it did become one of the show’s most-watched segments. It gets reposted on YouTube every couple of years, and the latest reupload racked up 144K views in just a couple of months. Clearly, they knew what their audience wanted.

Even with all the added explanations, the fictionalized version didn’t come anywhere near the bizarre nature of the actual accident. Sometimes, the real story really is stranger than fiction.