What happens if you eat a death cap?

Deadly. A single cap can kill an adult. The apparent recovery phase after the first day is the most dangerous part, because it delays treatment while liver damage continues. Any suspected ingestion is an emergency — call poison control immediately and do not wait for symptoms.

Death Cap vs Puffball

The test that settles it

Cut any small white ball in half top to bottom. A puffball is uniformly white inside; an Amanita egg shows the outline of a developing mushroom.

Read this before anything else

Never eat a wild mushroom identified by a website or an app.That includes this one. These tools narrow possibilities; they cannot see your mushroom, its base, its smell or its habitat, and the difference between a meal and a liver transplant is sometimes a feature buried in the soil.
Get it confirmed in person by an experienced local forager or a mycological society. Most regions have one, most run free identification sessions, and they will look at the actual specimen.
Dig, do not pull. The cup at the base of a death cap is often underground. Pulling the mushroom leaves the most important feature in the soil.
If someone has eaten a wild mushroom and feels unwell, call poison control now — in the US, 1-800-222-1222. Do not wait for symptoms to worsen. Amatoxin poisoning has a false recovery phase, and delayed treatment is what makes it fatal. Save any uneaten pieces for identification.

Death Cap

Can kill

Amanita phalloides

Under the cap: gills
Spore print: white
Growing on: soil, hardwood litter
Stem: White, with a soft skirt-like ring hanging near the top and — critically — a membranous sac at the base. That sac is often buried, so the mushroom must be dug up rather than picked to see it.
If eaten: Deadly. A single cap can kill an adult. The apparent recovery phase after the first day is the most dangerous part, because it delays treatment while liver damage continues. Any suspected ingestion is an emergency — call poison control immediately and do not wait for symptoms.

Puffball

No known toxins

Lycoperdon and Calvatia species

Under the cap: none
Spore print
Growing on: grass, soil, hardwood litter
Stem: Absent, or a short sterile base.
If eaten: True puffballs have no significant toxins while pure white inside. The danger is not the puffball but what can be mistaken for one: a button-stage death cap looks like a small white ball until you cut it. Cut every single one.

Confirming death cap

White spore print, white gills that stay white, and a white stem.
Membranous cup (volva) at the stem base. Dig the whole mushroom up — pulling it snaps the base off and loses the single most important feature.
Skirt-like ring near the top of the stem.
Growing from soil near oak and other hardwoods, never on wood.

Confirming puffball

Cut every specimen in half from top to bottom. The inside must be uniformly white, firm and featureless, like a marshmallow.
If you see the faint outline of a cap, gills or a stem inside, it is a young Amanita — possibly a death cap — and not a puffball.
If the inside is yellow, olive or brown, it is either a maturing puffball or an earthball, and neither should be eaten.
No gills, no stem, no ring, no volva on the outside.

Still not certain?

Then you have your answer, and it is not to eat it. Run the full key, then take the specimen to someone who can hold it.

Identify it step by step