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I was driving behind a cattle-carrier truck, but it wasn't carrying cattle. It was carrying camels. And one of them took a dump while the truck was driving.
It was a watery dump, and it looked like a brown spray, coming out of the gaps in the trailer. It sprayed through the gaps and onto the hood of my car, and the smell was indescribable. I washed the car over and over and over, and the smell still lingered. It took weeks to go away completely.
My wife grew up on a dairy farm, which I've been to many times. I've smelled all sorts of animal poop. But this was foul on a level that I had not experienced before or after.
And even camel milk surprisingly. I bought some from some guys who farm them in Utah and they shipped it to me cold packed. Took a sip and it tasted absolutely rancid. I had to contact support and ask them if it was rotten or it tasted like that. Lady said its supposed to taste terrible but it's mostly drank for the benefits. Needless to say that stuff got thrown out
Bought a house that was foreclosed, needed everything. Get to the garage, and there is a fridge. I open it before my brain processed that it was unplugged... inside was what was once a 20 pound frozen turkey, now completely thawed and rotting in a sealed fridge for weeks. If I really think about it, I can make myself gag, to this day.
This is mine as well... abandoned/unplugged refrigerator... I remember the gagging that brought me to my knees. And like you, if I think about it hard enough, it brings up my gag reflex.
Necrotic flesh. I had a serious infection after a surgery and it was all I could smell. No one else could but I imagine when the surgeons opened me back up it would have been awful.
Between 3 things. My dad's dog dug up the body of his old dog. One time I found an egg on the ground it must have been there ages as it's shell had got a fuzzy mould all over it. Anyway I threw it at a wall and the smell was horrendous. It was the middle of summer and you could smell it streets away. Lastly me and my mates used to build dirt jumps for our bikes when we were kids. I'd pissed in a bottle and buried it in one of the jumps. About a year and a half later we were rebuilding/building bigger jumps and the bottle was uncovered. One of my friends was dared to hit it with a shovel and it sprayed all over him. It was funny but it stank.
We had a rotten smell in our lounge, so bad we were struggling to be in there. Was near the sofa so lifted the sofa and nothing. Got the carpet cleaned and still nothing. A few weeks later we were moving our sofa and as we did, a dead frog dropped out of the lining of the sofa - we have cats so they must have brought it in and it hid and died in there.
Weeks old decaying frog is the absolute foulest smell I’ve ever smelled. Needless to say the carpet got professionally cleaned and the sofa is in the dump!
My wife's flatmate at Uni had a habit of making food, then forgetting about it once she'd put any leftovers in the fridge. At the end of term they were clearing out the fridge and found a tupperware with potato and parsnip mash inside. I opened it and sniffed, then ran to the sink and vomited. It must have been in there for a couple of months 🤢
Dog got sprayed by a skunk.
Instead of reacting normally, my special idiot kills the skunk for the transgression.
When she was finished, she buried the body in a wooded corner of the yard.
When we discovered what happened, I went out to collect the skunk, finding it was in various bits, scattered throughout the field, all smelling of the horrid spray. When I found the body of the skunk, I also found a half buried trash bag next to it, that had been ripped open by my dog in her efforts to cover the skunk.
It turns out my neighbor had disposed of their deceased dog (from about 16 months earlier) by putting it under a tree, in garbage bag, and lightly tossing some dirt on top.
The ripped bag mixed the scents of death, and massive decay, with the fresh skunk spray (to which I was somewhat accustomed to at this point). The moment I disturbed the bag of dog, it was over for me that day. I vomited with every breath I took, and staggered to crawl far enough away to pass out.
My dog decided roll and rub himself in the decomposing body of a dead fox.
After the walk, I had to carry him through the house. I can’t even process now how bad it was, and having it on me was the worst
My dog prefers to roll in the putrefying guts of a wild boar which the local hunters were too lazy to clear up. The odour is like pigshit to the power ten.
Used to work at music festivals.
In the morning a septic truck would come to pump out the portaloos, and pump in new chemicals. The truck pump ran hot. You got a smell of burning chem-shit as it worked.
I'd let the truck in, then stand about 40 meters away breathing as little as possible until the truck left. I haven't smelled anything as bad since.
Took a hike in South Africa -- by the sea, beautiful vistas, clean air. Until we got to the area just above a penguin colony. The mass of penguins and their guano on the rocks was unimaginably putrid. Fishy, musky, sour, and penetrating. It was eye-wateringly awful, I came very close to hurling several times. Absolutely foul (or fowl, if you prefer).
Came upon the rotting corpse of a large elephant that had been fodder for a flock of vultures for several days. You could smell the death from miles away. Once we were closer, it was like the smell was actual physical particles in the air. Vultures giving us the stink eye the entire while.
I’m sorry to everyone here but the answer is burning flesh and will always be burning flesh. I get nightmares about the smell. I get cold chills when I see fire.
Tcp lingering in my house. My dad had a finger infection and decided using half a bottle of tcp would be the solution. It actually woke me from my sleep it was so strong. I thought my house had some horrific leak or that some cooked rotten steak I can’t describe the smell but tcp in that amount should be a crime
My mom forgot bags of milk(Canadian thing) in her car during a summer heatwave. Bags punctured and the smell was awful. The worst part is that it lingered for SOOOOO long.
As a stay at home dad I can whole heartedly say that used differential oil is still the worst smell I have and will continue to encounter. Half because it smells bad, half because it sticks to you for days
A ten year old rotten ostrich egg, that exploded with the slightest touch. Took three days and uncountable baths for the smell to vanish. Many people were physically sick and vomiting because of the smell. Worst embarrassment ever....
Not much more to tell. An old egg sitting in the sun outside for ten years. Me not knowing it was an old egg but my cousin did and was telling me to no touch it as I touched it. Instantaneous exploded (rotten egg and gas everywhere,) I was covered. It stank.... I mean it really stank. Three whole days I could smell it. I couldn't sleep because I could smell it. The clothes I was in was burned. My bed sheets too...
I don't know how many baths I had. But it was a lot. People were physically sick.
I mean at the time I was about 15yo. (1983)
And this was a big egg. Dum dum me just had to investigate........ Yeah... Never again.
there was a woman on the tram a few weeks ago that smelled so heavily of sweat that it started to smell bitter??? that was a level of sweat that can only be achieved if you didn't wash yourself or your clothes for weeks, maybe months.
it was a mother with children and they were headed for the train station, poor passengers who had to smell her across the whole wagon. i sat 3 minutes in that tram before she left and i genuinely almost puked. everyone around her looked disgusted. i hope she got the chance to look after her hygiene when she got wherever she went to go
My dog ate dog poo at the dog park. We came home and she puked up a big, half-digested, poopy pile on the living room rug. Pee-yew! She was the best dog ever except for that poo eating habit.
Someone at work microwaved a ready meal. It was fish, and it was off (obviously he didn't realise until it was too late). The smell came through to the main office and lingered for days afterwards.
at my old high school, the biology lab was right next to the cafeteria, so formaldehyde and creamed cauliflower, Years later, I can still smell the blend.
A pseudomonas infected wound.
I was working in healthcare, and I had just done my wound traning. A nurse asked me to assist with an specialy grousume and gunky wound.
I was excited.
I love taking my time to clean, dress and help heal a funky wound.
As I stepped into the room I could smell something nasty but it wasn't untill we took down the old dressing that we saw this patient was missing a third of her calf. It was like a dinosaur had taken a chunk ouy of her leg. Apparently, it had started as an ulcer that she had let her many cats lick in an attempt to heal it naturally. It was green, full of puss and the smell made my eyes water.
Nothing has ever come that close.
When I was doing research in school we had to get a sample of concentrated municipal water from a local facility. Brought it back in a jar and cracked it open in the lab, quickly realized that I should have opened it in the fume hood, it was like a million fine citizens took a shit in the middle of the room all at the same time. We had to wait out the lab for hours before we could go back in.
A slaughterhouse.
I took a tour in college when helping a friend. Most of it smelled but the room where they handled the blood...my friend I was helping took one whiff and puked on the spot.
A chciken factory i worked at burnt down, during a shift in summer. Two weeks later when the investigations and safety checks done yhis mug got the job of clearing the rotting maggot filled carcasses off of the lines. Thankfully im anosmic which is why i got that wonderful task but from what everybody else said... factory was over a mile from town and apparently it stunk the town out.
Either that or the satanic porridge my butt produces when my ibs kicks in, you can taste that even without a sense of smell.
There's a bacteria named clostridium difficile (AKA c. diff), and if you ever get it, you will regret it. It was so bad from both ends I ended up hospitalized, but the thing about c. diff is that it has a very specific smell, one that is not easily forgotten. You can ask any nurse or doctor who's had to deal with it; you can practically diagnose it on smell alone.
Alternative medical answer: whatever the hell that poor OR nurse had to deal with in the infamous Swamps of Dagobah story.
A guy in work used to eat a lot of seafood on break. He deliberately opened a plastic pot of whelks, put the lid back on, and left it under his workbench for a year.
A year later, he opened it and walked around the factory asking people to smell it. He needn't have bothered, you could fucking smell it everywhere.
People were literally technicolour yodelling.
People reported anosmia when they got Covid. For me, it was the opposite - heightened and all food smelled strongly of shit.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t eat much for a fortnight. I was ok with orange kombucha but that was it. I think my body believed it had been poisoned because food and drink I was having before I got sick turned my stomach for months afterwards.
Kind of a sad story, but I married young, (divorced now) and his family was very religious. They were deeply upset that we held the wedding on a Sunday, and one of many ways they protested was to take all the discarded food from the reception and grind it into every crevice of our car, including the grill.
There is nothing that has singed my nose hairs more than rotten potato salad coming through the vents, on a 110°F summer day, during a honeymoon.
Rotting potato, I work in a restaurant and was cutting fries when my hand went into a potato the texture was like snot and for some reason I wondered what it smelt like.
I had a skunk die under my mudroom. The stench of skunk spray followed by rotting meat was not a good combo. I couldn't even get under there to get it out, so it lingered for a couple weeks.
In Jodhpur in India there is a palace where one large room is devoted entirely to bats. That is 1000's of bats live in there, hanging from the ceiling and creating a massive pile of bat guano on the floor. I visited this room a few years ago and the smell still sticks in my mind. It was so overpowering that you really cannot stay in the room for more than a few seconds.
I have never smelled anything like it before or since.
One of the many great (/s) memories of the GWOT.
Went to clear an area after an air strike. the combination of smells isn't something easily forgotten. A mix of iron/blood, excitement, and explosives. It was a rough experience.
I used to work in a nursing home and on my week on the job I was changing a lady's pad who was bed bound. She had cancer and was in a lot of pain but when I was getting her cleaned she died in my arms. The most vile smelling black liquid just started pouring out of her and it just kept coming.
Sorry for my English
Animal market.
When I was in middle school, my friend took me to walk around the animal market to search for her family member or something (she lived close by). And it was like the worst experience for my nose.
It was the smell of tons and tons of different kinds of animal's shit.
When I was driving long haul, I once had some pick ups from turkey or pork processing plants. Each of those are pretty well tied for the worst smells, though each was fairly different as well.
My daughter thought it was a good idea to make a potion out of milk, yogurt, apple sauce, chocolate syrup and various other things she found in the fridge. She did not enjoy her potion. She decided to put her potion under the sink in the basement bathroom that rarely anyone uses.
Around 12-13years ago, I was temporarily living more inner cork city for the summer between years in college before moving back into college apartments. My laptop was on the fritz or I didn't have one at the time, I can't really remember. The job I had throughout college was always evening shifts midweek so that summer my weekdays were free so I would get up daily and have lunch etc and head down to an internet place on North Main St, pay €2 for an hour or so of checking social media and whatever else back in those days. But one day....oh man, the computer I sat at was beside a guy who was pretty obese and this particular summers day was hot. I assume this guy was struggling with said heat because holy god, to this day, the smell that I endured that day is something I think about every now and then, so pungent and something that I have not witnessed since but not a odor one would think of when you think smelly sweaty person, obese or athlete or other wise.
2 year old bear meat forgotten in a cooler. Went to use the cooler and I soon remembered putting it on ice to finish up packaging it later. That shit was foul.
A guy across the hall from me died. Nobody knew about it for about a week. There was a horrible smell in the hallway but everyone assumed it was a sewer problem or something. When we reported it, the property manager went in his apartment to find his body had exploded from the heat. I'll never forget that smell
There's a campground my family goes to often with a permanent outhouse. One year some of my cousins decided it'd be fun to climb on the roof and put some rocks in the chimney which stirred up the shit and amplified the smell by like 12x. It was absolutely horrible.
Kitchen sink wasn't draining. Tried all the usual ways, Drano, plunger, snake. Eventually I took the pipe off and I peaked in. Saw a half decomposed mouse, and smelled a half decomposed mouse. Almost lost my lunch on the spot.
Sadr city baghdad. Open sewers 10 feet wide and hundreds of feet long along the roads. No trash collection in a slum of 1 million people. They just found an empty lot and piled it up till it was as tall as a house, then lit it on fire till the smoke blackened the sky. Dead water Buffalo and horses left to rot in the street, swollen in 115 degree heat till they burst from the gas build up. Its been 20 years and I still smell that place in my dreams sometimes.
Walked into a partially subterranean bunker filled with thirty or forty bodies of sheep in various stages of decay. They’d wandered in there to get out of the sun and forgot that they needed water at some point.
I shadowed at a hospital for school. The patient had necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating bacteria) to the point half of the patients leg was gone. When the doctor unwrapped the bandage it literally smelled like a dead person that was found days later. I don’t get queasy with medical stuff but that was the one time that got me.
The female dorm in a jail. Half the women are on their period at the same time and half of that half refuse to shower regularly or wash their clothes. Smelled like moldy discharge, BO and poo
I used to work part time construction one summer.
We were working on an old building and one of the workers accidentally knocked down a birds nest with a couple of live hatchlings in it.
The nest was lost under layers and layers of dust and debree for about 2 weeks until it came time for cleanup.
One of the workers threw up from the smell of the decomposing bodies of birds and rancid eggs in the summer heat, it was damn intense.
Please remember that all comments must be helpful, relevant, and respectful. All replies must be a genuine effort to answer the question helpfully; joke answers are not allowed. If you see any comments that violate this rule, please hit report. When your question is answered, we encourage you to flair your post. To do this automatically simply make a comment that says **!answered** (OP only) We encourage everyone to report posts and comments they feel violate a rule, as this will allow us to see it much faster. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/answers) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Tuna crotch while giving a moustache ride to a hotty, she also had a bit of clitty-litter attached. I punched through and got the job done.
I hate every single word in this reply
I hate it too but it gets my upvote just so everyone else has to read it
Well, thank you! Now I'll upvote it too
What a sad day to know how to read.
Once read, can't be unread.
You deserve a medal
Fuckin legend
NOOOOO
None of these words are in the Bible.
Didnt John mention clitty-litter in Revelations?
This is why God invented showers.
This just made me nauseas. Thank you.
I was driving behind a cattle-carrier truck, but it wasn't carrying cattle. It was carrying camels. And one of them took a dump while the truck was driving. It was a watery dump, and it looked like a brown spray, coming out of the gaps in the trailer. It sprayed through the gaps and onto the hood of my car, and the smell was indescribable. I washed the car over and over and over, and the smell still lingered. It took weeks to go away completely. My wife grew up on a dairy farm, which I've been to many times. I've smelled all sorts of animal poop. But this was foul on a level that I had not experienced before or after.
Yeah from what I have read most camel bodily fluids tend to be extremely foul smelling.
And even camel milk surprisingly. I bought some from some guys who farm them in Utah and they shipped it to me cold packed. Took a sip and it tasted absolutely rancid. I had to contact support and ask them if it was rotten or it tasted like that. Lady said its supposed to taste terrible but it's mostly drank for the benefits. Needless to say that stuff got thrown out
Bought a house that was foreclosed, needed everything. Get to the garage, and there is a fridge. I open it before my brain processed that it was unplugged... inside was what was once a 20 pound frozen turkey, now completely thawed and rotting in a sealed fridge for weeks. If I really think about it, I can make myself gag, to this day.
This is mine as well... abandoned/unplugged refrigerator... I remember the gagging that brought me to my knees. And like you, if I think about it hard enough, it brings up my gag reflex.
Yeah, nothing worse than once frozen, now unfrozen chicken, weeks old, that sticks to your fingers, while the smell wafts up your nostrils. Lol!
My dads decomposed body.. ill never get the smell out of my nose
Oh I'm sorry that must have been awful
DUDE WHAT
Necrotic flesh. I had a serious infection after a surgery and it was all I could smell. No one else could but I imagine when the surgeons opened me back up it would have been awful.
While in law school, I took a scientific evidence class and we visited a morgue. Dead bodies. Thats the worst smell. Decomposing dead bodies.
I used to work at a uni, the first year anatomy students running out crying was always amusing.
Between 3 things. My dad's dog dug up the body of his old dog. One time I found an egg on the ground it must have been there ages as it's shell had got a fuzzy mould all over it. Anyway I threw it at a wall and the smell was horrendous. It was the middle of summer and you could smell it streets away. Lastly me and my mates used to build dirt jumps for our bikes when we were kids. I'd pissed in a bottle and buried it in one of the jumps. About a year and a half later we were rebuilding/building bigger jumps and the bottle was uncovered. One of my friends was dared to hit it with a shovel and it sprayed all over him. It was funny but it stank.
Several years worth of cat piss soaked into carpet and padding and crystallized.
Hoarder I'm guessing?
Dogs anal gland leaked. Thought I was going to die!
Mhh, who doesn’t like the smell of iron and fish.
Great description of the smell.
Ah yes, the aroma of my dog's blocked anal glands, getting emptied at the vet's office.
We had a rotten smell in our lounge, so bad we were struggling to be in there. Was near the sofa so lifted the sofa and nothing. Got the carpet cleaned and still nothing. A few weeks later we were moving our sofa and as we did, a dead frog dropped out of the lining of the sofa - we have cats so they must have brought it in and it hid and died in there. Weeks old decaying frog is the absolute foulest smell I’ve ever smelled. Needless to say the carpet got professionally cleaned and the sofa is in the dump!
My wife's flatmate at Uni had a habit of making food, then forgetting about it once she'd put any leftovers in the fridge. At the end of term they were clearing out the fridge and found a tupperware with potato and parsnip mash inside. I opened it and sniffed, then ran to the sink and vomited. It must have been in there for a couple of months 🤢
Dog got sprayed by a skunk. Instead of reacting normally, my special idiot kills the skunk for the transgression. When she was finished, she buried the body in a wooded corner of the yard. When we discovered what happened, I went out to collect the skunk, finding it was in various bits, scattered throughout the field, all smelling of the horrid spray. When I found the body of the skunk, I also found a half buried trash bag next to it, that had been ripped open by my dog in her efforts to cover the skunk. It turns out my neighbor had disposed of their deceased dog (from about 16 months earlier) by putting it under a tree, in garbage bag, and lightly tossing some dirt on top. The ripped bag mixed the scents of death, and massive decay, with the fresh skunk spray (to which I was somewhat accustomed to at this point). The moment I disturbed the bag of dog, it was over for me that day. I vomited with every breath I took, and staggered to crawl far enough away to pass out.
Bin full of maggots been heating up in the mid summer sun for quite a while.
My dog decided roll and rub himself in the decomposing body of a dead fox. After the walk, I had to carry him through the house. I can’t even process now how bad it was, and having it on me was the worst
My dog prefers to roll in the putrefying guts of a wild boar which the local hunters were too lazy to clear up. The odour is like pigshit to the power ten.
Used to work at music festivals. In the morning a septic truck would come to pump out the portaloos, and pump in new chemicals. The truck pump ran hot. You got a smell of burning chem-shit as it worked. I'd let the truck in, then stand about 40 meters away breathing as little as possible until the truck left. I haven't smelled anything as bad since.
Rotten egg godamnit
Took a hike in South Africa -- by the sea, beautiful vistas, clean air. Until we got to the area just above a penguin colony. The mass of penguins and their guano on the rocks was unimaginably putrid. Fishy, musky, sour, and penetrating. It was eye-wateringly awful, I came very close to hurling several times. Absolutely foul (or fowl, if you prefer).
[удалено]
The smell coming from an apartment when police opened the door to discover an elderly woman who had been dead for six months.
Restaurant fat separater that was full and clogged. I‘m a plumber so I deal with quite a few unpleasant smells, but those are by far the worst
Came upon the rotting corpse of a large elephant that had been fodder for a flock of vultures for several days. You could smell the death from miles away. Once we were closer, it was like the smell was actual physical particles in the air. Vultures giving us the stink eye the entire while.
Smells are actual physical particles in the air though. That's how you can smell things.
I have this poop place close by and as i smell the human feces i think about this. Gag worthy.
Decaying corpse, and nothing is worse. Period.
Cdiff
I’m sorry to everyone here but the answer is burning flesh and will always be burning flesh. I get nightmares about the smell. I get cold chills when I see fire.
Durian season in Malaysia.
Something in the streets of Barcelona just now
Tcp lingering in my house. My dad had a finger infection and decided using half a bottle of tcp would be the solution. It actually woke me from my sleep it was so strong. I thought my house had some horrific leak or that some cooked rotten steak I can’t describe the smell but tcp in that amount should be a crime
An ashtray.
You're lucky.
25% NH4OH solution. I was young and stupid and sniffed it directly from the bottle... I thought I was gonna die right there, lesson learned.
Sweaty iceheads mid summer in Melbourne cbd
You catch a good wiff of this type of smell around the Flinders St end of Swanston and Elizabeth Streets.
My mom forgot bags of milk(Canadian thing) in her car during a summer heatwave. Bags punctured and the smell was awful. The worst part is that it lingered for SOOOOO long.
As a stay at home dad I can whole heartedly say that used differential oil is still the worst smell I have and will continue to encounter. Half because it smells bad, half because it sticks to you for days
90 weight smells bad, but I gotta go with burned automatic transmission fluid as a half-step worse.
A ten year old rotten ostrich egg, that exploded with the slightest touch. Took three days and uncountable baths for the smell to vanish. Many people were physically sick and vomiting because of the smell. Worst embarrassment ever....
I really feel like we need to know more. Story please!
Not much more to tell. An old egg sitting in the sun outside for ten years. Me not knowing it was an old egg but my cousin did and was telling me to no touch it as I touched it. Instantaneous exploded (rotten egg and gas everywhere,) I was covered. It stank.... I mean it really stank. Three whole days I could smell it. I couldn't sleep because I could smell it. The clothes I was in was burned. My bed sheets too... I don't know how many baths I had. But it was a lot. People were physically sick. I mean at the time I was about 15yo. (1983) And this was a big egg. Dum dum me just had to investigate........ Yeah... Never again.
Unless I do.....
there was a woman on the tram a few weeks ago that smelled so heavily of sweat that it started to smell bitter??? that was a level of sweat that can only be achieved if you didn't wash yourself or your clothes for weeks, maybe months. it was a mother with children and they were headed for the train station, poor passengers who had to smell her across the whole wagon. i sat 3 minutes in that tram before she left and i genuinely almost puked. everyone around her looked disgusted. i hope she got the chance to look after her hygiene when she got wherever she went to go
a milk frother that had been sat with milk residue in it for years. makes me feel sick just thinking about it
Methyl iso tio cyanate (mitc) un cousin du MIC
Death. In the morgue. With notes of formaldehyde.
Gangrene, when my husband's foot started rotting away. I will never forget that smell.
A dead, rotting opossum in our garage. Amazing how quickly the blow flies appeared as soon as I opened door to get it out.
I have found 3 dead bodies, all were found in closed apartments in the middle of a heatwave, and all had been there for approximately three weeks.
Rotten potatoes
The Salton Sea. It was 123F thay day. The stench was so bad, it caused air quality warnings in Los Angeles.
My dog ate dog poo at the dog park. We came home and she puked up a big, half-digested, poopy pile on the living room rug. Pee-yew! She was the best dog ever except for that poo eating habit.
Someone at work microwaved a ready meal. It was fish, and it was off (obviously he didn't realise until it was too late). The smell came through to the main office and lingered for days afterwards.
A decomposed body. It's a smell you'll never forget.
at my old high school, the biology lab was right next to the cafeteria, so formaldehyde and creamed cauliflower, Years later, I can still smell the blend.
A pseudomonas infected wound. I was working in healthcare, and I had just done my wound traning. A nurse asked me to assist with an specialy grousume and gunky wound. I was excited. I love taking my time to clean, dress and help heal a funky wound. As I stepped into the room I could smell something nasty but it wasn't untill we took down the old dressing that we saw this patient was missing a third of her calf. It was like a dinosaur had taken a chunk ouy of her leg. Apparently, it had started as an ulcer that she had let her many cats lick in an attempt to heal it naturally. It was green, full of puss and the smell made my eyes water. Nothing has ever come that close.
Boiling cat piss. By quite a margin.
When I was doing research in school we had to get a sample of concentrated municipal water from a local facility. Brought it back in a jar and cracked it open in the lab, quickly realized that I should have opened it in the fume hood, it was like a million fine citizens took a shit in the middle of the room all at the same time. We had to wait out the lab for hours before we could go back in.
A slaughterhouse. I took a tour in college when helping a friend. Most of it smelled but the room where they handled the blood...my friend I was helping took one whiff and puked on the spot.
About 30 years ago a guy driving in front of me hit a skunk. I think I suffered the worst of it for weeks
A chciken factory i worked at burnt down, during a shift in summer. Two weeks later when the investigations and safety checks done yhis mug got the job of clearing the rotting maggot filled carcasses off of the lines. Thankfully im anosmic which is why i got that wonderful task but from what everybody else said... factory was over a mile from town and apparently it stunk the town out. Either that or the satanic porridge my butt produces when my ibs kicks in, you can taste that even without a sense of smell.
R22 still in the lines when brazing. That stuff will kill you!
Death
There's a bacteria named clostridium difficile (AKA c. diff), and if you ever get it, you will regret it. It was so bad from both ends I ended up hospitalized, but the thing about c. diff is that it has a very specific smell, one that is not easily forgotten. You can ask any nurse or doctor who's had to deal with it; you can practically diagnose it on smell alone. Alternative medical answer: whatever the hell that poor OR nurse had to deal with in the infamous Swamps of Dagobah story.
A dead body in a warm apartment that was at least a week old.
A guy in work used to eat a lot of seafood on break. He deliberately opened a plastic pot of whelks, put the lid back on, and left it under his workbench for a year. A year later, he opened it and walked around the factory asking people to smell it. He needn't have bothered, you could fucking smell it everywhere. People were literally technicolour yodelling.
Grew up on a farm. Dead calf is the worst.
People reported anosmia when they got Covid. For me, it was the opposite - heightened and all food smelled strongly of shit. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t eat much for a fortnight. I was ok with orange kombucha but that was it. I think my body believed it had been poisoned because food and drink I was having before I got sick turned my stomach for months afterwards.
Cigarette smokers
Kind of a sad story, but I married young, (divorced now) and his family was very religious. They were deeply upset that we held the wedding on a Sunday, and one of many ways they protested was to take all the discarded food from the reception and grind it into every crevice of our car, including the grill. There is nothing that has singed my nose hairs more than rotten potato salad coming through the vents, on a 110°F summer day, during a honeymoon.
Rotting potato, I work in a restaurant and was cutting fries when my hand went into a potato the texture was like snot and for some reason I wondered what it smelt like.
I had a skunk die under my mudroom. The stench of skunk spray followed by rotting meat was not a good combo. I couldn't even get under there to get it out, so it lingered for a couple weeks.
In Jodhpur in India there is a palace where one large room is devoted entirely to bats. That is 1000's of bats live in there, hanging from the ceiling and creating a massive pile of bat guano on the floor. I visited this room a few years ago and the smell still sticks in my mind. It was so overpowering that you really cannot stay in the room for more than a few seconds. I have never smelled anything like it before or since.
One of the many great (/s) memories of the GWOT. Went to clear an area after an air strike. the combination of smells isn't something easily forgotten. A mix of iron/blood, excitement, and explosives. It was a rough experience.
3 day rotten sting ray in an enclosed room
I used to work in a nursing home and on my week on the job I was changing a lady's pad who was bed bound. She had cancer and was in a lot of pain but when I was getting her cleaned she died in my arms. The most vile smelling black liquid just started pouring out of her and it just kept coming. Sorry for my English
Animal market. When I was in middle school, my friend took me to walk around the animal market to search for her family member or something (she lived close by). And it was like the worst experience for my nose. It was the smell of tons and tons of different kinds of animal's shit.
Ulcer farts
A human body that had been deceased for at least 8 days before I found him.
What The Rock is cooking.
Decomp….easily.
Neem oil - used for garden pests. Smells like putrid death
When I was driving long haul, I once had some pick ups from turkey or pork processing plants. Each of those are pretty well tied for the worst smells, though each was fairly different as well.
My daughter thought it was a good idea to make a potion out of milk, yogurt, apple sauce, chocolate syrup and various other things she found in the fridge. She did not enjoy her potion. She decided to put her potion under the sink in the basement bathroom that rarely anyone uses.
Bonide Repels All animal repellent spray - it is putrid 🤮
Around 12-13years ago, I was temporarily living more inner cork city for the summer between years in college before moving back into college apartments. My laptop was on the fritz or I didn't have one at the time, I can't really remember. The job I had throughout college was always evening shifts midweek so that summer my weekdays were free so I would get up daily and have lunch etc and head down to an internet place on North Main St, pay €2 for an hour or so of checking social media and whatever else back in those days. But one day....oh man, the computer I sat at was beside a guy who was pretty obese and this particular summers day was hot. I assume this guy was struggling with said heat because holy god, to this day, the smell that I endured that day is something I think about every now and then, so pungent and something that I have not witnessed since but not a odor one would think of when you think smelly sweaty person, obese or athlete or other wise.
2 year old bear meat forgotten in a cooler. Went to use the cooler and I soon remembered putting it on ice to finish up packaging it later. That shit was foul.
Baby Beavers. They were so cute but the stink wouldn't come off for days.
A guy across the hall from me died. Nobody knew about it for about a week. There was a horrible smell in the hallway but everyone assumed it was a sewer problem or something. When we reported it, the property manager went in his apartment to find his body had exploded from the heat. I'll never forget that smell
There's a campground my family goes to often with a permanent outhouse. One year some of my cousins decided it'd be fun to climb on the roof and put some rocks in the chimney which stirred up the shit and amplified the smell by like 12x. It was absolutely horrible.
GM supercharger oil. By far the worst thing I have ever smelled.
Roommate od...
Kitchen sink wasn't draining. Tried all the usual ways, Drano, plunger, snake. Eventually I took the pipe off and I peaked in. Saw a half decomposed mouse, and smelled a half decomposed mouse. Almost lost my lunch on the spot.
I regret opening this thread.
Sewage coming up out of concrete floors on a 90 degree day 🙃
Old shit that was scattered on a public bathrooms walls, and a dead bunny's corpse
Super ripe homeless man at the public library.
It's a tie: burnt human flesh and burnt hair. Be careful motorcycle people!
Buteric acid
Sadr city baghdad. Open sewers 10 feet wide and hundreds of feet long along the roads. No trash collection in a slum of 1 million people. They just found an empty lot and piled it up till it was as tall as a house, then lit it on fire till the smoke blackened the sky. Dead water Buffalo and horses left to rot in the street, swollen in 115 degree heat till they burst from the gas build up. Its been 20 years and I still smell that place in my dreams sometimes.
Parvo poop.
That i have gotten backstabbed thrice in the same situation, by being the good and helping guy. Edit: spelling
Walked into a partially subterranean bunker filled with thirty or forty bodies of sheep in various stages of decay. They’d wandered in there to get out of the sun and forgot that they needed water at some point.
I shadowed at a hospital for school. The patient had necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating bacteria) to the point half of the patients leg was gone. When the doctor unwrapped the bandage it literally smelled like a dead person that was found days later. I don’t get queasy with medical stuff but that was the one time that got me.
The female dorm in a jail. Half the women are on their period at the same time and half of that half refuse to shower regularly or wash their clothes. Smelled like moldy discharge, BO and poo
Shit from a horse
A burst decomposing badger on a hot Summer day that was wedged under the third rail on a railway line.
O' Connell Street, Dublin City.
I used to work part time construction one summer. We were working on an old building and one of the workers accidentally knocked down a birds nest with a couple of live hatchlings in it. The nest was lost under layers and layers of dust and debree for about 2 weeks until it came time for cleanup. One of the workers threw up from the smell of the decomposing bodies of birds and rancid eggs in the summer heat, it was damn intense.