It’s safe to assume the cockroach is now dead (Picture: Imgur)

Cockroaches are notoriously hard to kill. In the ‘Who would survive a nuclear war?’ debate, it is accepted that the creepy-crawlies would endure.

Even when you chop them in half they keep wiggling. Even when you chop their heads off (which kills vampires for goodness’ sake), the insects can live for weeks.

That said, one woman’s attempts to make sure a cockroach was dead may cross over into the realms of overkill – given it ended up blowing up half a bathroom.

When a young female employee at a clean-up firm in Taiwan was called to an office and stumbled upon a cockroach, she didn’t hesitate to act.




First, she squashed the bug with a swift thwack of her shoe. Next, she wrapped the cockroach in tissue paper and crushed it. Then she set it on fire.

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Take a toilet full of detergent, add one flaming cockroach and voilà (Picture: Imgur)

Just to make sure it was gone for good, she then tossed the cockroach into the toilet – forgetting that she’d just cleaned it.

The result of the flaming cockroach and the cocktail of detergents in the toilet bowl was an extremely potent homemade explosive, which promptly went off a bang – blowing the toilet apart and stunning an office full of employees next outside.

Having discovered what caused the explosion, employees didn’t seem too concerned.

‘The dwarf has played his little trick. He can only play it once,’ said one, Shanghaiist reports.

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