Are you the type of person that keeps food in your fridge until it actually comes alive and just moves out on its own, or are you the member of your household that throws away the milk the nanosecond it hits its expiration date, for fear it might poison all of mankind? Because depending on your answer to that question you’re either going to find this video to be an amazing experiment or a mini-horror film, since it involves eating a 153-year-old cracker from the American Civil War.

This from the YouTube channel Steve1989 MREinfo, an account dedicated to eating any military rations, no matter how old they may be. Well they don’t get older than this piece of hardtack (a type of cracker made with flour, water, and occasionally salt) that “when properly stored will last for years.” This particular cracker, which based on the stories of Civil War soldiers at the time wasn’t very good even when it was new, was made in 1863 by the G.H. Bent Co in Milton, Massachusetts (still in business).

So, how did it taste?

He said it smelled and tasted like “old mothballs and library books” with just a “little bit of a bread-like, cracker deal.”

It didn’t seem as though the water really helped all that much, though the unpleasantness of the hardtack did help to make his cup of thirty-year-old instant coffee taste like the nectar of the gods.

Forget the unpleasant and boring taste, how could anyone be expected to win a war when they have to do that much chewing? Who has the time or the energy to face down the enemy when it takes so much effort to overcome a cracker?

Would you have eaten a cracker that old? Tell us why in the comments below.

Imagez: Steve1989 MREinfo; AMC