If You Can't Take the Heat, Stay Away From This Super-Spicy Soup Challenge

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” reads the inscription, marking the gates to Hell, in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem "Divine Comedy." In Saint Petersburg, the phrase serves as a warning, marking the gates to a fiery food Hell.

St. Pete’s Inferno: a $1,000 soup challenge. Warning: this piquant soup is extremely dangerous and not for the feint of heart.

Nitally’s Thai-Mex restaurant's inferno soup challenge: to consume 48 ounces of an epically spicy soup.  A soup so hot diners must first sign a waiver, have a witness, and consume the meal outside.  

Why so hard? The soup includes seeds from the “ghost pepper” -- a spice so fiery hot that it is used in hand grenades and pepper spray. The time: 30 minutes, no more. Ninety-five people have tried the challenge.  None has succeeded.  The prize: $1,000.

Can anyone take the heat?  Challengers are not allowed to drink milk.  They cannot leave the table.  And the aftermath, I hear, is not a pleasure.  The author herself tried a few bites of the soup (admittedly very hot), but stopped after learning the real risks.

Guess what? The soup is dangerous. Anyone who thinks he (or she) has the cojones to try it, without being a trained eating professional, is asking for trouble.

When the pepper seeds enter the stomach, strong discomfort and even medical issues can arise.  

Nitally’s owner Ally Valdez insists the soup “is very painful; serious aftermath is to be considered before you begin the challenge.” Proceed at your own peril.

Five spots remain.  Once the soup has been tried 100 times, even if no victor, Nitally’s will end the competition.  Do we have an Adam Richman (of Travel Channel's Man vs. Food) in St. Pete? Can anyone eat all forty-eight ounces of Inferno Soup--and live to tell the tale?  Good luck!