The Rocket Scientist's Poison Mushroom
From SAD OLIGARCH by Cool Zone Media and H11
October 22, 2025 · 34 min · Season 2 · Episode 3
About this episode
The episode discusses the tragic death of Russian rocket scientist Vitaly Melnikov after consuming a poisonous mushroom, coinciding with the failure of the Lunar 25 mission he worked on.
Russian rocket scientist Vitaly Melnikov has been picking wild mushrooms his whole life. Somehow though, at 77-years-old, he picks a bad one and eats it up. This kills him. His body shuts down and he's entered the eternal cosmos for real. Coincidentally, this happens just after the extremely important Kremlin Lunar 25 mission he worked on malfunctioned and crashed into the surface of the moon... Jake Hanrahan's projects: www.hanrahan.tv See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Topics covered
- mushroom poisoning
- rocket science
- Kremlin
- Lunar 25
- death
- true crime
Keywords
- Vitaly Melnikov
- mushroom poisoning
- rocket scientist
- Lunar 25
- Kremlin
- true crime
- death
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Kremlin
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- The Tycoon in a Gulag (Part Two) · January 7, 2026 · 32 min
- The Tycoon in a Gulag (Part One) · December 10, 2025 · 28 min
- Drowned in Success · November 26, 2025 · 31 min
- Hanged with Hands Bound · November 19, 2025 · 33 min
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