This Liquid Nitrogen Cocktail Trend Will Literally CRACK OPEN Your Stomach #WeirdDarkNEWS

This Liquid Nitrogen Cocktail Trend Will Literally CRACK OPEN Your Stomach #WeirdDarkNEWS

This Liquid Nitrogen Cocktail Trend Will Literally CRACK OPEN Your Stomach

A Moscow corporate party turned into a medical emergency when a celebrity chef’s flashy “cryo-show” cocktail expanded inside a man’s stomach like an internal airbag, rupturing the organ and sending him to the ICU — and he’s far from the only victim.


Listen to “This Liquid Nitrogen Cocktail Trend Will Literally CRACK OPEN Your Stomach #WeirdDarkNEWS” on Spreaker.


Corporate holiday parties are notorious for awkward small talk with the accounting department, questionable dancing by middle management, and that one coworker who treats the open bar like a personal challenge from God. But a corporate Christmas party in Moscow in December 2025 added a new achievement to the list: sending a guest to emergency surgery because the drinks were served at negative 196 degrees Celsius. Turns out the holiday spirit can be deadly — especially when it’s been flash-frozen with a cryogenic compound capable of rupturing internal organs.

THE SHOW MUST GO ON (UNTIL SOMEONE EXPLODES)

The incident occurred at Igra Stolov — which translates to “Game of Tables” — a culinary studio in Moscow that offers cooking classes, children’s events, and corporate retreats. On this particular evening, the studio had hired an unnamed celebrity chef to entertain guests with a flashy “cryo-show,” which is exactly what it sounds like: cocktails made with liquid nitrogen, creating that dramatic fog effect beloved by mad scientists, mixologists who think they’re mad scientists, and apparently anyone who wants to feel like they’re drinking at a Halloween-themed nightclub run by chemistry professors with poor judgment.

The chef poured liquid nitrogen directly into paper cups, creating thick clouds of vapor that billowed over the drinks while guests laughed and filmed. This is the part where you might expect someone — anyone — to mention that liquid nitrogen boils at negative 196 degrees Celsius (that’s negative 321 degrees Fahrenheit for those who prefer their temperatures in American chaos units) and should absolutely, under no circumstances, be consumed before it has completely evaporated.

No one mentioned this.

According to the Russian Telegram channel Baza, which originally reported the incident, a 38-year-old guest named Sergey was handed one of these smoking cups and allegedly encouraged by the chef to drink it immediately. A viral video circulating online shows what happened next: Sergey takes a sip from the paper cup, and within seconds, nitrogen vapor bursts from his mouth and nose like he’s an ice dragon overdoing it at last call at the South Pole Pub. He recoils instantly, clutches his abdomen, and collapses in agony.

Before drinking, Sergey reportedly joked to the chef, “It was nice working with you.” His coworkers probably thought this was office humor about the party being awkward. It was, in fact, an accidentally prophetic comment about the state of his internal organs.

THE PHYSICS OF VERY BAD DECISIONS

To understand why drinking liquid nitrogen is roughly equivalent to swallowing a small bomb, you need to understand one number: 696.

That’s the expansion ratio of liquid nitrogen. One liter of liquid nitrogen becomes 696 liters of nitrogen gas at room temperature. To put this in perspective: imagine trying to fit 696 basketballs into a space designed for one basketball. Now imagine that space is your stomach. Now imagine the basketballs are appearing instantaneously and with great enthusiasm.

Inside a room, this expansion is merely annoying — it can reduce oxygen levels and potentially cause asphyxiation in enclosed spaces. Inside a human stomach, which is decidedly not 696 liters in capacity and did not consent to this physics experiment, the expansion creates what medical professionals would describe as “an extremely bad time.” The stomach, faced with the sudden presence of hundreds of times its expected gas volume, does what any reasonable organ would do when asked to accommodate the impossible: it ruptures.

Doctors determined that when Sergey swallowed the cocktail, the liquid nitrogen began rapidly expanding inside his body. His stomach perforated almost instantly. Emergency services transported him to intensive care, where surgeons operated to suture the damaged organ. He reportedly regained consciousness after surgery, though his condition was described as serious.

The physics here are unforgiving. Liquid nitrogen has a boiling point of negative 196 degrees Celsius — so cold that carbon steel, plastics, and rubber become brittle and fracture under even minimal stress.  So cold that brief contact with skin can cause cryogenic burns. So cold that even the vapor can rapidly freeze human tissue and eye fluid. And so cold that when it hits the warm, moist environment of a human body (like your stomach), it doesn’t just warm up politely — it explosively converts to gas with the force of a substance that has been cryogenically compressed to 1/696th of its natural volume and would very much like to return to its original state, thank you.

The culinary studio has not publicly commented on whether they’ll be updating their cryo-show protocols, though one might hope “inform guests that the drink they’re holding could physically rupture their stomach” makes it onto the new checklist.

THE HISTORY OF EXPLODING HUMANS

The Moscow incident is, somewhat horrifyingly, not the first time liquid nitrogen cocktails have sent someone to emergency surgery. The substance has been rupturing stomachs with remarkable consistency for over a decade, which you’d think would be information more widely shared among people who serve it to strangers. Instead, we have what amounts to a global clinical trial on whether human internal organs can withstand cryogenic assault. (Spoiler: they cannot.)

The most famous case occurred in 2012 in Lancaster, England, when 18-year-old Gaby Scanlon went out to celebrate her birthday with friends at Oscar’s Wine Bar and Bistro. A bartender, learning it was her birthday, brought her a complimentary Jägermeister shot made with liquid nitrogen — a free drink with the potential to kill her.

Scanlon drank two of these shots. The first went down fine. The second caused what witnesses described as an explosion inside her stomach, approximately four seconds after it was poured. Four seconds. That’s less time than it takes to unlock your phone. Smoke billowed from her mouth and nose. Her stomach began to expand visibly. She told the court she felt something was wrong immediately — “Smoke was coming from my nose and mouth. Straight away I knew something was not right. My stomach expanded.”

She was rushed to Lancaster Royal Infirmary, where doctors found a massive perforation in her stomach. The damage was so severe that surgeons had no choice but to perform a total gastrectomy — the complete removal of her stomach — connecting her esophagus directly to her small bowel. Police stated she would have died if the operation had not been performed urgently.

Scanlon survived, but she now faces a lifetime of vitamin supplements, liquid replacement meals, and severely limited food options. She can no longer enjoy eating the way most people do. In court, she said she felt angry that these “theatrical cocktails” seemed to be aimed at younger people, especially 18-year-olds who were just legally able to drink and wanted to try something exciting. The bar was eventually fined £100,000 (approximately $155,000) for negligence.  A very small price for a human stomach and a lifetime of losing the ability to eat pizza.

The owner, Andrew Dunn, admitted he got the idea after seeing similar cocktails at a London bar — which is a bit like admitting you got the idea for playing with fireworks after seeing someone else play with fireworks at a distance too far to observe the consequences. The bar had told staff to advise customers to wait 10 seconds before drinking. This waiting time was found to be entirely baseless and insufficient. The judge said the bar had been “too cavalier” and failed to follow warnings about the dangerous chemical.

Dr. John Ashton, Cumbria’s director of public health, described Scanlon as “the victim of an irresponsible alcohol industry that’s now competing on gimmicks.” He was perhaps being generous by implying the industry was merely irresponsible rather than actively attempting to discover creative new ways to hospitalize its customers.

THE GLOBAL STOMACH PERFORATION TOUR

England and Russia aren’t alone in the liquid nitrogen hospitalization club. This is, depressingly, an international phenomenon.

In 2017, a 30-year-old man in Delhi, India, learned an expensive lesson about cocktail consumption at a trendy bar. The man — who requested to remain anonymous, presumably because “guy who had his stomach opened like a book by drinking the wrong thing” is not how anyone wants to be known — consumed a cocktail with white smoke flowing from it without waiting for the nitrogen to evaporate. Then, experiencing discomfort but chalking it up to acid reflux, he accepted and drank a second one.

Within seconds, his stomach began to swell. He developed extreme pain and difficulty breathing. He was rushed to Columbia Asia Hospital in Gurgaon, where doctors performed emergency surgery. His stomach, according to the surgeon Dr. Amit Deepta Goswami, “was open like a book.” The tear was so large that it could not simply be stitched back together — the tissue near the perforation was too damaged. Doctors removed the damaged portions of his stomach and connected what remained to his small intestine. He spent three days on a ventilator before regaining consciousness.

“Consuming liquid nitrogen can cause havoc in a person’s system,” Dr. Goswami told reporters, in what may be the most understated medical assessment in the history of understatement. “The gas did not have an escape route after the person consumed it and the sphincter closed, this is what led to a perforation in his stomach.”

The Delhi case highlighted a troubling regulatory gap. While India’s Food Safety and Standards Authority permits liquid nitrogen as a freezing agent in food manufacturing — where it evaporates completely before the product reaches consumers — there were no clear guidelines for its use in cocktails served immediately at the point of sale. The substance was simply being poured and served without any formal safety protocols.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TERRIBLE IDEAS

The first recorded case of liquid nitrogen ingestion in medical literature occurred in 1997, when a physics student in Massachusetts was demonstrating the Leidenfrost effect — a phenomenon where a vapor layer forms between a liquid and a much hotter surface, creating an insulating barrier. This is why liquid nitrogen skitters across floors like a caffeinated mercury droplet, and why some demonstrators have historically put liquid nitrogen in their mouths and exhaled dramatic plumes of condensed vapor without immediate harm.

The key word there is “immediate.” The physics student accidentally swallowed some of the liquid nitrogen during the demonstration and suffered near-fatal injuries. The Leidenfrost effect works very well at protecting surfaces; it works significantly less well once the liquid is actively in your digestive system, where your stomach lining is not particularly interested in supporting a theatrical physics demonstration.

This hasn’t stopped people from continuing the demonstrations. One physicist described in the journal article “Boiling and the Leidenfrost Effect” how he used to put liquid nitrogen in his mouth and exhale plumes of vapor — until the liquid “thermally contracted two of my front teeth so severely that the enamel ruptured into a ‘road map’ of fissures.” His dentist, presumably after composing himself and resisting the urge to ask why his patient was gargling with cryogenic substances, convinced the physicist to drop the demonstration. Sometimes the most important scientific discoveries are the ones that teach us to stop doing something.

Russia alone has seen multiple liquid nitrogen incidents in 2025. Just months before the Moscow Christmas party disaster — in February 2025 — a 23-year-old woman at a corporate event at a culinary studio in St. Petersburg drank soda containing liquid nitrogen and suffered an esophageal burn. The esophagus, it turns out, also does not appreciate being exposed to substances cold enough to freeze human tissue instantaneously. Russia appears to be conducting an informal nationwide experiment on whether corporate parties can be made more interesting through cryogenic beverages. The results, so far, suggest they can — though not in the way anyone intended.

DRAGON’S BREATH AND THE CHILDREN’S MENU

Perhaps the most disturbing chapter in the liquid nitrogen saga involves a product marketed primarily to children: “Dragon’s Breath” desserts.

Dragon’s Breath is a frozen treat made from colorful cereal balls — typically with a flavor similar to Froot Loops — dipped in liquid nitrogen and served in a cup. When placed in the eater’s mouth, the cold of the nitrogen combines with the warmth of the mouth to release visible vapors, allowing the person to breathe “smoke” out of their nose and mouth like a dragon. Or like someone making a terrible decision, depending on your perspective.

The product became wildly popular on TikTok and Instagram, spreading through malls, carnivals, and fairs across Asia and the United States. Children loved it. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration did not.

In 2018, the FDA issued a safety alert warning that Dragon’s Breath and similar products — marketed under names like “Heaven’s Breath” and “nitro puff” — had caused “severe and in some cases life-threatening injuries, such as damage to skin and internal organs caused by liquid nitrogen still present in the food or drink.” Reports documented difficulty breathing after inhaling the vapor, and injuries to skin and internal organs from handling or eating these products.

In Florida, a boy suffered an asthma attack after consuming Dragon’s Breath. His mother, Rachel Richard McKenny, wrote on Facebook that her son nearly died after his airways constricted from the cold vapor. They had to drive to a fire station, where he was given life-saving treatment. “PLEASE, if you know someone that has even just a mild case of asthma, do NOT let them have this snack,” she wrote. “I should have known better, but it did not occur to me that this food could have this effect. As a result, my son could have died.”

In Pensacola, Florida, a 14-year-old girl went to the hospital after burning her hand while eating Dragon’s Breath.

In Indonesia, the problem became widespread enough that the Ministry of Health issued a public warning in 2023 after more than 25 children were hurt consuming Dragon’s Breath candies, including two who were hospitalized. One 4-year-old boy in Jakarta was admitted with severe stomach pain. A child in East Java suffered cold burns on his skin. The ministry urged parents, teachers, and local health authorities to educate children about the dangers — presumably because “don’t eat the thing that’s so cold it can instantly freeze your internal organs” is not an intuitive concept for most elementary school students.

The FDA’s recommendation was straightforward: “Avoid eating, drinking, or handling food products prepared with liquid nitrogen at the point of sale immediately before consumption.” But this advisory faced the same problem as most sensible health recommendations: it requires people to know about it before they make the decision it’s advising against.

TANKS, EXPLOSIONS, AND INDUSTRIAL DISASTERS

Liquid nitrogen doesn’t just destroy stomachs. Given sufficient opportunity, it will destroy pretty much anything.

On January 12, 2006, at approximately 3 AM, a liquid nitrogen tank at Texas A&M University decided to demonstrate exactly how much force 696-to-1 expansion can generate. The tank in question was about 26 years old and had, at some point, been modified by persons unknown. The pressure-relief devices — safety mechanisms specifically designed to prevent exactly this sort of catastrophe — had been removed and sealed with brass plugs.

Without these safeguards, pressure built inside the tank until it reached approximately 1,200 PSI. Then the bottom blew out.

The force of the explosion was sufficient to propel the tank through the ceiling immediately above it. It shattered a reinforced concrete beam directly below it. It blew the walls of the laboratory 0.1 to 0.2 meters off their foundations. It turned the tile floor within a 5-foot radius into quarter-sized pieces of shrapnel that embedded themselves in the walls and doors of the lab. The floor cracked but held — barely — thanks to the supporting beam, which was destroyed in the process.

The tank, minus its bottom, rocketed through the concrete ceiling and into the mechanical room above, where it was stopped only by a water pipe. Had anyone been in the laboratory at 3 AM, they would very likely have been killed. The university’s accident report noted, with impressive understatement, that “without these two safeguards in place, it was only a matter of time until an explosion occurred.”

The Texas A&M incident was a laboratory accident. The 2021 disaster in Gainesville, Georgia, was something far worse.

On January 28, 2021, a liquid nitrogen leak at Foundation Food Group’s poultry processing plant killed six workers and injured at least a dozen others. The plant, located in a city nicknamed “Poultry Capital of the World,” used liquid nitrogen to flash-freeze processed chicken. A bent tube in an immersion freezer — likely damaged during maintenance — caused the freezer to fill with an unsafe level of liquid nitrogen, which overflowed and rapidly vaporized into a four- to five-foot-high cloud of nitrogen gas.

Nitrogen gas is odorless and colorless. The workers had no warning. Three maintenance workers entered the freezer room and immediately died of asphyxiation. Additional workers entered to try to rescue their colleagues and also died immediately. A sixth person died while being transported to the hospital.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board later determined the deaths were “completely preventable.” Foundation Food Group had failed to train employees on the hazards of liquid nitrogen. Workers were not equipped with air monitoring or alarm devices that could have warned them about the dangerous vapor cloud. The company had allowed the position responsible for safety management to remain vacant for over a year before the incident. OSHA issued 59 violations and proposed nearly $1 million in penalties, with officials including Labor Secretary Marty Walsh calling the six deaths “entirely avoidable.”

The tragedy was made worse by the fact that workers died trying to save their colleagues. At least 14 employees entered the freezer room or surrounding area to investigate or attempt rescues. They had no idea that the invisible cloud they were walking into was displacing all the oxygen in the air.

THE HANDS THAT MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY TOOK

In 2009, a 24-year-old German chef named Martin Enger learned that liquid nitrogen does not forgive amateur experimentation.

Enger was a fan of molecular gastronomy — the culinary movement that applies scientific techniques to cooking, popularized by celebrity chefs like Heston Blumenthal and Ferran Adrià. He somehow obtained a canister of liquid nitrogen and decided to try a recipe at his girlfriend’s mother’s house. This was, in retrospect, several poor decisions stacked on top of each other.

There was an “enormous explosion.”

Enger’s right hand was shredded by the force of the blast. He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors determined his left hand was so badly injured it had to be amputated. He also suffered serious injuries to his leg and genital area. His condition was described as life-threatening, and he was placed on artificial respiration.

In a small miracle, surgeons were later able to reattach his left hand, though doctors estimated it would require up to 10 operations and that function would be restored to only 60-70% capacity. When police arrived to investigate the explosion, Enger initially claimed he had been trying to fill a gas lighter. His girlfriend, apparently unwilling to cover for him, said he was trying to empty a canister of liquid nitrogen for cooking.

Liquid nitrogen does not explode easily under normal circumstances. Investigators suspected the explosion occurred because Enger sealed or pressurized the container in some way, allowing pressure to build until catastrophic failure. This is, essentially, the same mechanism that launched the Texas A&M tank through a concrete ceiling — except Enger was holding the container when it happened.

The lesson here is that liquid nitrogen belongs in professional kitchens with trained staff and proper equipment, not in your girlfriend’s mother’s apartment while you attempt to recreate a dish you saw on television.

WHY DOES ANYONE STILL DO THIS?

The appeal of liquid nitrogen in cocktails is purely aesthetic. It creates that smoky, mysterious fog effect that looks incredible in photos and videos. It chills drinks faster than ice ever could. It makes you feel like you’re drinking something from a science fiction movie — which, to be fair, you absolutely are, though typically in science fiction movies the characters drinking from smoking vessels are either villains or about to be attacked by villains.

When handled properly by trained professionals, liquid nitrogen can be used safely in food and drink preparation. Master mixologists typically swirl the liquid nitrogen around the glass until it completely evaporates, then pour in the alcohol, which retains a lingering mist. The key is that nothing is served until the nitrogen has entirely transformed from a cryogenic liquid into harmless atmospheric gas. At that point, you’re basically drinking from a very cold glass surrounded by dramatic visual effects.

The problem is that “handled properly by trained professionals” is doing an enormous amount of work in that sentence. The theatrical appeal of liquid nitrogen tends to attract establishments and performers more interested in the show than the safety protocols, and the consequences of getting it wrong are catastrophic.

Professor Peter Barham of the University of Bristol’s School of Physics put it plainly after the Gaby Scanlon case: “Liquid nitrogen can be used safely in the preparation of foods. However, since it is not safe to ingest liquid nitrogen, due care must be taken to ensure that the liquid has all evaporated before serving any food or drink that was prepared with liquid nitrogen.”

This seems straightforward. Wait for the thing that will destroy your internal organs to finish evaporating. And yet.

John Emsley, a science writer and fellow at the Royal Society of Chemistry, explained the physics to the BBC: “If you drank more than a few drops of liquid nitrogen, certainly a teaspoon, it would freeze, and become solid and brittle like glass. Imagine if that happened in the alimentary canal or the stomach. The liquid also quickly picks up heat, boils and becomes a gas, which could cause damage such as perforations or cause a stomach to burst.”

A substance so cold it turns your digestive system brittle like glass, then immediately converts to 696 times its volume in gas while still inside you. It’s not exactly a recipe for a fun night out.

THE REGULATIONS THAT DON’T EXIST

A substance capable of rupturing human stomachs, requiring emergency gastrectomies, killing workers in industrial accidents, and hospitalizing children would seem to demand heavy regulation when used in food service.

It doesn’t.

In the United States, the FDA’s 2018 advisory about Dragon’s Breath and similar products was exactly that — an advisory. It warned consumers to avoid these products and recommended retailers cease selling them. But it wasn’t a ban. It wasn’t even a formal regulation. It was a strongly worded suggestion.

In the UK, after the Gaby Scanlon case, the Food Standards Agency issued warnings about liquid nitrogen cocktails. But the cocktails weren’t banned. Bars are still free to serve them, as long as they take some care about it — though what constitutes adequate care remains somewhat ambiguous.  Interesting that the UK will ban words and phrases considered “politically incorrect” (making it illegal to use them), yet doesn’t ban something that will outright kill you if you if you consume even a few drops of it.

In India, the Food Safety and Standards Authority permits liquid nitrogen as a freezing agent in food manufacturing, but when the Delhi man’s stomach was perforated in 2017, officials acknowledged there were no clear guidelines for its use in cocktails. Restaurant owners were using it for theatrical effects without any formal safety training or protocols.

In Russia, liquid nitrogen cocktails are served at corporate parties with celebrity chefs who apparently don’t warn guests about the risks of consuming cryogenic substances.

The regulatory landscape is a patchwork of warnings, advisories, and general assumptions that people will figure out not to drink things that can rupture their internal organs. This approach has not been entirely successful.

A PARTIAL LIST OF THINGS THAT HAVE GONE WRONG

For the sake of clarity, here is a recap of what we have documented about liquid nitrogen consumption just in this episode, all of which have been documented in news reports and medical literature:

A physics student in Massachusetts (1997) accidentally swallowed liquid nitrogen during a Leidenfrost effect demonstration and suffered near-fatal injuries — the first recorded case of ingestion.

A physicist cracked the enamel on two of his front teeth by repeatedly putting liquid nitrogen in his mouth to exhale vapor, creating a “road map” of fissures.

An 18-year-old in Lancaster, England (2012) had her entire stomach removed after drinking two liquid nitrogen Jägermeister shots at a bar on her birthday.

A 30-year-old man in Delhi (2017) had portions of his stomach removed after drinking two liquid nitrogen cocktails. Doctors described his stomach as “open like a book.”

A German chef (2009) lost both hands in an explosion while experimenting with liquid nitrogen at his girlfriend’s mother’s house. One hand was later reattached.

A liquid nitrogen tank at Texas A&M University (2006) exploded through a concrete ceiling after someone removed the pressure-relief devices.

Six workers in Gainesville, Georgia (2021) died of asphyxiation when a liquid nitrogen leak created an invisible cloud that displaced oxygen in a poultry plant freezer room.

A 23-year-old woman in St. Petersburg, Russia (February 2025) suffered esophageal burns from drinking soda containing liquid nitrogen at a corporate event.

A 38-year-old man in Moscow, Russia (December 2025) had his stomach ruptured by a liquid nitrogen cocktail at a corporate Christmas party.

Twenty-five children in Indonesia (2022-2023) were hurt consuming Dragon’s Breath candies, including one 4-year-old hospitalized with severe stomach pain.

A boy in Florida suffered a near-fatal asthma attack after consuming Dragon’s Breath.

A 14-year-old girl in Pensacola, Florida, was hospitalized after burning her hand while eating Dragon’s Breath.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed in the United States by individuals who suffered burns or internal injuries from Dragon’s Breath products at malls and fairs.

This list is not comprehensive. These are simply the incidents that made the news. The actual number of liquid nitrogen injuries is certainly higher.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Sergey is reportedly recovering in the ICU, having survived a holiday party that very nearly killed him. His stomach, though sutured, will presumably never look at a smoking beverage the same way again. The celebrity chef who served the drink has not been publicly identified, which is probably for the best, given that “the chef who ruptured a man’s stomach at Christmas” is not a title that inspires consumer confidence.

Liquid nitrogen continues to be legal to use in food service, despite a growing catalog of perforated stomachs, removed organs, burned esophagi, exploded tanks, asphyxiated workers, hospitalized children, and at least one physics teacher’s permanently fissured tooth enamel. The substance expands 696 times its volume, has no warning properties like odor or color, boils at negative 196 degrees Celsius, and can cause tissue damage on contact. It is, in other words, a uniquely terrible substance to pour into a paper cup and hand to someone at a party.

But it does make really impressive fog.

If you find yourself at an establishment serving liquid nitrogen cocktails, the FDA’s advice is straightforward: wait for the nitrogen to fully evaporate before drinking. You’ll know it’s evaporated when the bubbling has stopped and there’s no liquid pooling in the bottom of the cup. If someone tells you to drink it immediately, don’t. If the bartender seems unsure about safety protocols, order something else – and probably find another place to go drinking with your friends. And if you’re at a corporate party and a celebrity chef hands you a smoking beverage, maybe just stick with beer.

Your stomach will thank you.


REFERENCES


NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

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