> In fact, I have never made my pickles and hot sauce because I am now irrationally and deathly terrified of botulism. Don't be. Read up the facts, and make su

> In fact, I have never made my pickles and hot sauce because I am now irrationally and deathly terrified of botulism. Don't be. Read up the facts, and make sure to prepare things right. This is the point of the warning. Botulism is not some cosmic horror which reaches out and grabs you randomly. It is like a knife. If you do things right it is perfectly safe. If you do things wrong it can kill you. The point of the warnings is to learn where the "edge of the knife" is and how to behave to keep yourself safe. The point of the comment is that the provided "safety precautions" are wrong. It is as if someone said "to avoid knife injuries make sure to always put your fingers under what you are cutting. That way you will know when your knife is getting blunt." The advice provided is that obviously bad. > here's some real numbers: We are not talking about national averages. If you make chilli sauce which is not sufficiently acidic then you bottle it up and close oxygen away from it you created a science experiment to grow botulism bacteria. If you do that you suddenly increased your personal probabilities from those nice and low national numbers to alarmingly high. The warning is there because people are bad at following instructions. And that is usually fine. When someone is making a cupcake and they forgot the chocolate chips out the cupcakes will be less delicious but won't kill them. With chilli sauce this is not the case. It can literally kill you if you adjust the recipe such that it is not acidic enough anymore. So we warn people about that.