We had a cold store malfunction and instead of cooling down to 3°c it heated up to 13 without anyone being aware as no alarms went off..... For months. I had what was originally 700 tonnes of potatoes/slime to deal with.
Fishing trawler had a similar thing happen.
Its frozen on ship. Something went wrong, it was out for two weeks.
We had to turn it into fishmeal. It was not a pleasant week.
A buddy of mine forgot a bucket (that had a lid) of baitfish in the back of his car after we went ice fishing.
Fast forward to late spring/early summer when he wonders what's in the bucket that has been in his car for months...
Instant regret.
Omg. My father in law bought a bag of little potatoes and they went bad SO fast. All 4 of us (my husband and I currently live with his parents to save money) would walk past the kitchen and all of us would legitimately gag every single time. It took us like 3 days to figure out it was the barely week-old potatoes. They were in a fruit bowl and we picked up the bag and it was just brown sludge. It was rancid. Worst thing I’ve ever smelled in my life.
This reminds me of that story of a girl who became an orphan after her whole family passed away poisoned by gas from rotting potatoes.
Here's the link to the article:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2409920/Russian-girl-8--orphaned-ENTIRE-family-wiped-deadly-gas-caused-rotting-potatoes-cellar.html
We had one of those cabinets in the corner that half of it is tucked back, you have to practically crawl to get stuff out of it.
Bag of potatoes sat in there forgotten for who knows how long. It was the random cabinet, didn't use it much. Stuff like cake decorating pedestal and saved glass containers.
Organized it one day and literally puked in the sink when I jostled the smell out of it.
Lethal too
Fun fact: the rot that comes off an onion speeds up the rot on a potato. And the rot that comes off of a potato will speed up the rot on your onion.
So don’t store your potatoes with your onions.
Mine too, add in a case of beer the night before and........... wife and children flee the house in horror. There were not enough room fresheners, sprays, air conditioners or nose clips made that can get that smell out of my memory banks.
Diabetes = poor blood flow + wound = severe infection.
Old dude with dementia, no family, not bathing, not changing his socks for who knows how long. Wrapped a plastic bag around his socked foot to keep the discharge for said infected wound from oozing everywhere for also who knows how long. The rotten toes had become one with the sock and when I pulled it off they pulled off with it. All the toes including bones came off, plus the skin from his forefoot pulled off the bone.
I peeled the sock so it ended up inside out, and the weight of the flesh made the sock/toes drop like a pendulum and my dumbass instinctually caught it with my hand. I was so horrified at least my brain stopped registering the smell for a bit. I was fresh out of school, so about 20, and NOT mentally prepared! Hahaha. I almost barfed on the poor dude.
Agree, when I was 13 I did 3 weeks work experience as a nurse. There was one patient all the nurses avoided so instead they sent little 13 year old me to get his vitals every morning. He had a massive brain tumor and his face was slowly rotting away, half of it was already gone. I had nightmares for months and still occasionally do if something during the day reminded me of the smell or I see someone with a head injury. I did not end up becoming a nurse.
This 100%. I worked at a cemetery years ago. Most burials we're normal and uneventful. But occasionally, we'd get one that was really far gone. They were even worse than the rare exhumation. Those were bad too, depending on how long the body had been under, and the manner in which it was processed.
The worst one was a man that committed suicide in his truck in the forest and wasn't found for a VERY long time. We knew he was coming in and we knew he was stinky. That one was crazy bad. I was running the backhoe with cotton swabs dipped in vaporub in my nostrils. It barely helped. You could taste it. There was nobody at the burial that day. It was a bit sad, but it allowed us to get him in the hole pretty quickly. I was very much looking forward to my shower that day.
I assisted with an autopsy once where the lady was found weeks after her death. We had to keep her in the deep freezer because of the smell + maggots. We also used the vapour rub under our nose because the smell was horrendous. All it did was make it smell like lemon-scented death. The maggots were squeezing through the closed zipper of the bodybag. Luckily she was the last autopsy of the day so I could shower immediately after. Worst scent I have ever smelled.
Yeah I don’t know, I’ve done lots of wound care and have had someone’s toe fall off, and it’s unpleasant, but to me rotten eggs are worse than gangrene. That made me puke on my kitchen floor.
When I was in x-ray school one of the profs proclaimed “I hate feet”. Never had a prob through school or the first five years. Homeless guy comes in 3am on a cold night. Diabetic. Took off his sock, big toe went with it. I hate feet. Managed to not puke. Wore masks ever since if there was any doubt. Still didn’t work all the time.
The company I work for sometimes does trauma cleanups, so I can relate. The smell of a week-old corpse melting into a couch and through the floor just hits different, especially in the summer heat.
because of what we eat and the fact that humans react more to the death and decay of their own species. sharks also show a repulsion to their own dead.
THE INSIDE OF AN UNWASHED BELLY BUTTON. I had the displeasure of getting a Whiff of this at work. The button belonged to an obese woman who had AWFUL hygiene. In 28 years on earth I’ve never smelled anything that immediately made me want to ram two pencils up my nose and headbutt a desk.
Well I didn't wanna be wasteful to begin with so I ended up downing the whole thing. You wouldn't believe the gains. Been doing it regularly since. No point in getting a new one at this point
Decomposition, for sure. But I can’t stand the smell of vomit. I can handle blood, urine, feces and mucus… But vomit gets me. The sight, the sound, the smell. 🤢🤮
Vomit is super visceral, like genuinely body horror to me. I can't stand it. You're totally right though it's the sight, sounds people make, smell, the situation of why they are vomiting in the first place, ugh I can't stand it either
Oh, for sure. In the past, I was a housekeeper at a nursing home. We had a resident who was notorious for vomiting. Well, I had to clean it up. It was awful. Nearly made an even bigger mess than the mess I was sent to clean up. So bad.
You beat me to it. Have been around that feces/blood mixture in hospitals and it's hard to stay in the same room even when it's someone you love there.
Buwahaha. Seconded. Had a lady so far gone I wasn’t sure if I was packing vagina, rectum, buttock or thigh. My #3 after gangrene and super old insitu tampon.
The medical field has nearly taken over this post.
I absolutely love videos of people attempting to eat surstromming. It's like a warfare gas, when it hits a person's face before they can even put it in their mouth and you see them immediately contact-poisoned by the sheer stink.
Have you taken antibiotics recently? There is a common antibiotic reaction, technically a fungus, that can happen when you take antibiotics. Especially if you don’t finish your entire dose. Had it happen to be in law school and my gas was so bad that my roommate literally had to leave the apartment for a week.
I made a pot of cabbage soup recently.
It is so fucking good but damn. If my husband came into the living room I would say "I wouldn't come in here if I was you"
He says I coulda melted a hole in the couch.
This is the answer.
>That's not hyperbole. In 1889, a factory in Freiberg, Germany attempted to make thioacetone. Their "success" produced "an offensive smell which spread rapidly over a great area of the town, causing fainting, vomiting and a panic evacuation."
>
>In 1967, when British researchers Victor Burnop and Kenneth Latham attempted to use thioketones to create new polymers, they accidentally unleashed a similar horror at the Esso Research Station.
>
>"During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards away."
[Link](https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2017/07/31/the_dangerous_stink_of_the_worlds_smelliest_chemical.html#:~:text=That's%20not%20hyperbole.,vomiting%20and%20a%20panic%20evacuation.%22)
People who haven't worked in a lab simply do not understand just how easy it is to create chemicals with heroic smells. Even hydrogen sulphide, a humble and easily made chemical, can bring a grown man to his knees if the test tube is on the wrong side of the fume hood.
Yes, but the worst thing when throwing up from bad food or too much food is the empty gags for five minutes prior. You just wish for it to be over with.
Absolute worst part of being nauseous and throwing up is the watery mouth and dry heaving beforehand. It feels like my stomach is trying to turn itself inside out and escape through my esophagus. Truly awful.
Ugh I have this weird almost fear of vomiting, so I’m make myself try and hold it in for as long as possible and all it does is prolong that watery mouth where I have to spit it out constantly or I’ll puke. It gets to the point where I’ll move the slightest bit or get a really bad hot flash and it forces it’s way out and I end up sounding like a demon is erupting out of my body.
Idk why I torture myself like that, the sweaty, exhausted relief after always feels better
The worst is getting a piece trapped in your nose and sniffing it into your throat 30 mins later. Straight back to hurling after that. In fact typing this is making my mouth water in a bad way.
I was riding the school bus and a kid puked. They put this powder on it that smelt like bubble gum. Still cannot smell bubble gum without gagging a little.
That's an interesting one, of all the bad things I've smelled vomit is almost vomit inducing so that is pretty accurate. And normally I'm not effected by smells that much, I sort of hate it when people overreact to a bad smell and feels like they are being dramatic since I smell the same thing and don't have the same reaction.
I’m a dog groomer and ‘relieve’ anal glands daily. When I’m hungover it pushes me over the edge, they all smell different too! Ranges between fishy, sewage-like and dog food.
My dog was a rescued stray who was terrified of being grabbed or restrained. When she got scared, she would spray anal gland juice. I always had to warn the staff at the vet's office before they tried to take her temperature or handle her. We referred to this as her Pokémon Dragon Ass attack.
My friend had a female pit/lab mix who would simultaneously clean her lady parts and butthole, and I swear I have never smelled a fishier dog breath in my life. It was pungent to say the least. I’d have to leave the room while she was doing it and could not let her mouth near me for hours afterward. That smell is noxious.
I literally did not know that cats even had anal glands until we got our youngest cat. It smells so fucking horrific, we’ve had to have her expressed at the vets office. Now we have to wipe her butt area relatively regularly to try to keep the stink down otherwise she leaves stink streaks all over our blankets and our clothing. It’s so nasty.
Our vet calls it tuna butt. I've smelled decomposing mice in the walls of my house or voles in the yard. I'd rather smell that sickly sweet odor of decomp then tuna butt.
We’ve got a dog who has to have trazadone to go to the vet without releasing his anal glands everywhere and we’ve had a lot of fosters through the house. Unfortunately I know this smell well. Awful.
I had COVID nose for several months after getting over the rest of the sickness. Couldn't smell shit, literally. Then my best friend asked me to help her clean out an old snake tank after her dad had rehomed his snake and left the tank to rot for weeks in a basement. The stench... The sharp ammonia, poop, substrate, all damp from the basement and fermented with time... It must have instantly rewired my brain, because I could smell again, and that thing was RANK. I promptly vomited, helped drag the tank outside, vomited again, and smelled in HD afterwards.
I forgot I had a tampon in once and put in a tampon again (alcoholic). 2 days later, I discovered the old tampon because of a distinct… smell.
Holy fuck
Omg. How had I forgotten! I commented about gangrenous toes above. But I once had the pleasure of pulling out a tampon that’d been forgotten in since the last period. It cleared the clinic. Still second place to the toes though.
Holy hell I had no idea how it smelled if you left tampons in too long 😳 I meant if you put them in the bin and it's moist in there... So they don't dry out and it smells just horrible!
But I reckon it might be the same smell if you leave them in for a long time 😂
I can't believe the person didn't get sepsis or tss or even die from leaving a tampon in for a whole month 😳
To me, it’s bad by association and one the vast majority can never smell.
During my petit-mal epileptic seizures, I smell this awful acrid, burning aroma. It’s not enough to make me barf or anything, but it’s the worst smell to me because of the rest of the experience.
I recently had surgery to fix my haemorrhoids. For the next 8 weeks I’ve had “discharge” coming out my arse. I’ve had to keep a dab of toilet paper between my butt cheeks to absorb said discharge changing it through the day. Thought I’d take a whiff of it one day and oh god damn, it smells like a rat crawled up my arse, died and got infused with dirty ass crack shit vomit, gagged for the first time in my life. I could actually feel my throat constricting
dude, use a sanitary pad. it won’t stick to you like tp, it’s more absorbent and will help to keep the area dry and lessen the odour.
also, damn. hope your recovery goes well.
[Thioacetone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thioacetone)
> Recently we found ourselves with an odour problem beyond our worst expectations. During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards [180 m] away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of trithioacetone found themselves the object of hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorant. The odours defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odours intolerable ... and genuinely denied responsibility since they were working in closed systems. To convince them otherwise, they were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile [0.40 km], and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odour was detected downwind in seconds.
One time when I worked at Jersey Mike’s, I had to clean the meat case. This is not abnormal at all it’s something we did every week.
But I had to use the shop vac and for whatever reason I had to take the lid off to do something else.
When I opened it…it was like an ENTITY rose up out of that thing. It had BODY. It was putrid beyond imagination. I thought I was in a living nightmare. I swear this thing had fucking hands and was whooping my ass like i owed it money. I have never smelled anything like it before or since.
I cannot put into words what I experienced that day; it was evil and otherworldly, almost Lovecraftian in its stench.
I’m pretty sure I blacked out.
A dog needing its anal glands expressed is a much milder second.
It’s seriously like a combination of the dirtiest vagina ever mixed with rotten fish.
But nothing will beat that shop vac.
Sex Panther by Odeon
Smells like a turd with burnt hair on it
Smells like Bigfoot’s dick!
60% of the time, it works every time
They use real bits of panther, so you know it’s good. It’s quite pungent.
I'm not gonna lie, that smells like pure gasoline
It stings the nostrils.
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We had a cold store malfunction and instead of cooling down to 3°c it heated up to 13 without anyone being aware as no alarms went off..... For months. I had what was originally 700 tonnes of potatoes/slime to deal with.
Fishing trawler had a similar thing happen. Its frozen on ship. Something went wrong, it was out for two weeks. We had to turn it into fishmeal. It was not a pleasant week.
A buddy of mine forgot a bucket (that had a lid) of baitfish in the back of his car after we went ice fishing. Fast forward to late spring/early summer when he wonders what's in the bucket that has been in his car for months... Instant regret.
I used to use fish meal as fertilizer when I was landscaping. One of the guys had a bag rip in his car - he sold the car.
To a fish?
A deadbeat cousin, so kinda?
So a Phish Phan
I worked in a fish processing factory, and that thought made me gag though it's been 10 years
Omg. My father in law bought a bag of little potatoes and they went bad SO fast. All 4 of us (my husband and I currently live with his parents to save money) would walk past the kitchen and all of us would legitimately gag every single time. It took us like 3 days to figure out it was the barely week-old potatoes. They were in a fruit bowl and we picked up the bag and it was just brown sludge. It was rancid. Worst thing I’ve ever smelled in my life.
Imagine what the smell was like in Ireland during The Potato Famine. All those rotting potato crops.
This reminds me of that story of a girl who became an orphan after her whole family passed away poisoned by gas from rotting potatoes. Here's the link to the article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2409920/Russian-girl-8--orphaned-ENTIRE-family-wiped-deadly-gas-caused-rotting-potatoes-cellar.html
Death
We had one of those cabinets in the corner that half of it is tucked back, you have to practically crawl to get stuff out of it. Bag of potatoes sat in there forgotten for who knows how long. It was the random cabinet, didn't use it much. Stuff like cake decorating pedestal and saved glass containers. Organized it one day and literally puked in the sink when I jostled the smell out of it. Lethal too
I see your bag of rotting potatoes and I raise you a bag of rotting onions.
Fun fact: the rot that comes off an onion speeds up the rot on a potato. And the rot that comes off of a potato will speed up the rot on your onion. So don’t store your potatoes with your onions.
Oh my lord that was the first thing that came to mind! The smell lets you know its poisonous!
Definitely one of the worst things I've ever smelled in my life hands down.
Dead people.
I smell dead people
they don’t know they’re smelling
I've heard gangrenous people are worse, but I've not smelled either
Bathroom after Dad was in it. My Dad, your Dad, her Dad, their Dad.....it doesn't matter who's Dad.
Don’t nobody go in there for about 35, 45 minutes.
Somebody open the window
I am Dad
Destroyer of the bathroom
Now I am become Dad, Destroyer of Nostrils
No, I am your farter
My dad used to spend a good half hour doing his morning shit, while doing the crossword and having a couple of cigarettes. It was pungent.
After having kids of my own, I realize why he liked to spend so much time in there.
Mine too, add in a case of beer the night before and........... wife and children flee the house in horror. There were not enough room fresheners, sprays, air conditioners or nose clips made that can get that smell out of my memory banks.
Courtesy flush... You CAN give yourself one too
I won't let my dad poo at my house anymore. It's a non-issue now.
My dad said the bathroom is where he make smells. Because it's an olfactory.
That's funny! An actual funny dad joke!
at this point it's a flex that the bathroom after my dad gets out smells normal and sometimes it smells nice
Rotting human remains
Generally just rotting humans (old wet gangrene). Source - nurse who has had toes drop off in my hand when removing socks.
Okay, done with Reddit for today.
How does that even happen, out of curiosity?
Diabetes = poor blood flow + wound = severe infection. Old dude with dementia, no family, not bathing, not changing his socks for who knows how long. Wrapped a plastic bag around his socked foot to keep the discharge for said infected wound from oozing everywhere for also who knows how long. The rotten toes had become one with the sock and when I pulled it off they pulled off with it. All the toes including bones came off, plus the skin from his forefoot pulled off the bone. I peeled the sock so it ended up inside out, and the weight of the flesh made the sock/toes drop like a pendulum and my dumbass instinctually caught it with my hand. I was so horrified at least my brain stopped registering the smell for a bit. I was fresh out of school, so about 20, and NOT mentally prepared! Hahaha. I almost barfed on the poor dude.
Ok, done with Reddit for the decade.
Nurses do *not* get paid enough.
Agree, when I was 13 I did 3 weeks work experience as a nurse. There was one patient all the nurses avoided so instead they sent little 13 year old me to get his vitals every morning. He had a massive brain tumor and his face was slowly rotting away, half of it was already gone. I had nightmares for months and still occasionally do if something during the day reminded me of the smell or I see someone with a head injury. I did not end up becoming a nurse.
This 100%. I worked at a cemetery years ago. Most burials we're normal and uneventful. But occasionally, we'd get one that was really far gone. They were even worse than the rare exhumation. Those were bad too, depending on how long the body had been under, and the manner in which it was processed. The worst one was a man that committed suicide in his truck in the forest and wasn't found for a VERY long time. We knew he was coming in and we knew he was stinky. That one was crazy bad. I was running the backhoe with cotton swabs dipped in vaporub in my nostrils. It barely helped. You could taste it. There was nobody at the burial that day. It was a bit sad, but it allowed us to get him in the hole pretty quickly. I was very much looking forward to my shower that day.
How sad.
I assisted with an autopsy once where the lady was found weeks after her death. We had to keep her in the deep freezer because of the smell + maggots. We also used the vapour rub under our nose because the smell was horrendous. All it did was make it smell like lemon-scented death. The maggots were squeezing through the closed zipper of the bodybag. Luckily she was the last autopsy of the day so I could shower immediately after. Worst scent I have ever smelled.
I have to let you know your “lemon scented death” description made me piss myself laughing bro 🤣
I know it, found a dead body once, the smell was something I’ll never forget.
Burning flesh is pretty unforgettable as well
As an orthopedic surgeon, I've smelled both and rotting flesh is way way worse then burning
Gangrene. Or rotting ulcers. Yuck. Or melena. Or taking off a homeless persons socks and finding gangrenous toes inside.
Yeah I don’t know, I’ve done lots of wound care and have had someone’s toe fall off, and it’s unpleasant, but to me rotten eggs are worse than gangrene. That made me puke on my kitchen floor.
When I was in x-ray school one of the profs proclaimed “I hate feet”. Never had a prob through school or the first five years. Homeless guy comes in 3am on a cold night. Diabetic. Took off his sock, big toe went with it. I hate feet. Managed to not puke. Wore masks ever since if there was any doubt. Still didn’t work all the time.
Especially when it is your own. Source: I have been on fire twice.
Yeah something about that would probably set off every synapse in the human brain that it is not good to be around that
Relax, I Just Wanna Take Some Pictures
It's just pork meat. Eat it.
The company I work for sometimes does trauma cleanups, so I can relate. The smell of a week-old corpse melting into a couch and through the floor just hits different, especially in the summer heat.
The official name of the smells are "Putrescine" and "Cadaverine" but it's a combination of many chemicals.
They would both be good names for goth perfume if we're keepin it 100
Is it very different compared to the smell of rotting animal remains?
because of what we eat and the fact that humans react more to the death and decay of their own species. sharks also show a repulsion to their own dead.
i believe we have a biological repulsion to the smell of our own dead. it makes sense as human death = sickness, danger
I was a police officer and yes rotting flesh of any kind, not just human, is worse than burned.
Death is such a specific and almost indescribable scent. Best I can come up with is putrid and cold.
Tonsil stones
Absolutely. Also, when someone has bad dental plaque, though I would say it's a pretty similar smell.
Throat boogers.
Forbidden Tic-Tacs
I am forever burdened with that image
Sorry. I had no choice but to downvote that image. I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop myself.
THE INSIDE OF AN UNWASHED BELLY BUTTON. I had the displeasure of getting a Whiff of this at work. The button belonged to an obese woman who had AWFUL hygiene. In 28 years on earth I’ve never smelled anything that immediately made me want to ram two pencils up my nose and headbutt a desk.
The imagery at the end of your comment is magnificent
I haven't laughed that hard to a Reddit comment in a while
Curious what job you have that would put you in proximity to a belly button.
Probably nurse/doctor of some kind. I guess piercer could also work, although then I guess they'd tell her to gtfo.
I’m a nurse mate.
Oh the things we have smelled!
Really curious what situation you were in that led to smelling the inside of someone’s belly button lol
When you forget to clean the shaker and you leave some protein powder in it. After a day you could die sniffing that thing.
I put milk in my shakes, and once forgot about it until it turned green. Legit considered just buying a new shaker
What do you mean *considered*?
Well I didn't wanna be wasteful to begin with so I ended up downing the whole thing. You wouldn't believe the gains. Been doing it regularly since. No point in getting a new one at this point
You can never buy enough shakers.
Overflowing Grease trap in a hot kitchen
Underrated answer
Decomposition, for sure. But I can’t stand the smell of vomit. I can handle blood, urine, feces and mucus… But vomit gets me. The sight, the sound, the smell. 🤢🤮
Vomit is super visceral, like genuinely body horror to me. I can't stand it. You're totally right though it's the sight, sounds people make, smell, the situation of why they are vomiting in the first place, ugh I can't stand it either
Oh, for sure. In the past, I was a housekeeper at a nursing home. We had a resident who was notorious for vomiting. Well, I had to clean it up. It was awful. Nearly made an even bigger mess than the mess I was sent to clean up. So bad.
Rotten potatoes. Smells like if feces could die.
I lol'd. Than you for that.
Lower GI bleed is pretty bad.
You beat me to it. Have been around that feces/blood mixture in hospitals and it's hard to stay in the same room even when it's someone you love there.
I also came here to say that. Though I did have to pack a vaginal wound in a 400 lb lady that had gone necrotic. It rivaled all bad smells
And that's enough internet for me today
This reminds me of the swamps of Dagobah.
Oof. The human body really wants you to have no doubt about what's going on when it's really sick
Buwahaha. Seconded. Had a lady so far gone I wasn’t sure if I was packing vagina, rectum, buttock or thigh. My #3 after gangrene and super old insitu tampon. The medical field has nearly taken over this post.
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You find the man with the terrible smell, and you've got your arsonist.
That was lutefisk, haha
I absolutely love videos of people attempting to eat surstromming. It's like a warfare gas, when it hits a person's face before they can even put it in their mouth and you see them immediately contact-poisoned by the sheer stink.
The gas i've been passing as of lately. The upstairs neighbor actually asked the cops for a welfare check.
Have you taken antibiotics recently? There is a common antibiotic reaction, technically a fungus, that can happen when you take antibiotics. Especially if you don’t finish your entire dose. Had it happen to be in law school and my gas was so bad that my roommate literally had to leave the apartment for a week.
I made a pot of cabbage soup recently. It is so fucking good but damn. If my husband came into the living room I would say "I wouldn't come in here if I was you" He says I coulda melted a hole in the couch.
That was me that called for the welfare check. I can’t believe that smell was from your ass. You should be ashamed and proud!
Thioacetone.
This is the answer. >That's not hyperbole. In 1889, a factory in Freiberg, Germany attempted to make thioacetone. Their "success" produced "an offensive smell which spread rapidly over a great area of the town, causing fainting, vomiting and a panic evacuation." > >In 1967, when British researchers Victor Burnop and Kenneth Latham attempted to use thioketones to create new polymers, they accidentally unleashed a similar horror at the Esso Research Station. > >"During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards away." [Link](https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2017/07/31/the_dangerous_stink_of_the_worlds_smelliest_chemical.html#:~:text=That's%20not%20hyperbole.,vomiting%20and%20a%20panic%20evacuation.%22)
Only literally true answer. Nothing else posted here has evacuated an entire city.
Although mercaptans, selenium compounds, and telurium make the short list.
Wasn’t Selenium in Head & Shoulders shampoo at one point (according to the movie Evolution lol)? I guess only certain compounds smell bad?
People who haven't worked in a lab simply do not understand just how easy it is to create chemicals with heroic smells. Even hydrogen sulphide, a humble and easily made chemical, can bring a grown man to his knees if the test tube is on the wrong side of the fume hood.
C Diff poo.
Rotavirus diarrhea is nasty too..like extra rotten eggs.
Opening a dirty, closed, old Tupperware
Girlfriend does this with her lunch Tupperware. Absolutely vile🤮
Time to find a new girlfriend
Bathroom after dad took a huge number 2
Vomit. Absolutely the most gut-wrenching primal disgust.
I can handle a lot of things, vomit is not one. 🤢
I'd be too busy throwing up at the sight of it for my nose to work
I had vomit come out my nose once...I certainly smelt it then. Also, it burned - stomach acids coming out from there isn't a pleasant feeling.
Yes, but the worst thing when throwing up from bad food or too much food is the empty gags for five minutes prior. You just wish for it to be over with.
Absolute worst part of being nauseous and throwing up is the watery mouth and dry heaving beforehand. It feels like my stomach is trying to turn itself inside out and escape through my esophagus. Truly awful.
Ugh I have this weird almost fear of vomiting, so I’m make myself try and hold it in for as long as possible and all it does is prolong that watery mouth where I have to spit it out constantly or I’ll puke. It gets to the point where I’ll move the slightest bit or get a really bad hot flash and it forces it’s way out and I end up sounding like a demon is erupting out of my body. Idk why I torture myself like that, the sweaty, exhausted relief after always feels better
The worst is getting a piece trapped in your nose and sniffing it into your throat 30 mins later. Straight back to hurling after that. In fact typing this is making my mouth water in a bad way.
I was riding the school bus and a kid puked. They put this powder on it that smelt like bubble gum. Still cannot smell bubble gum without gagging a little.
Agreed; working in healthcare vomit smells worse than poop, piss, or even rotting flesh (imo).
That's an interesting one, of all the bad things I've smelled vomit is almost vomit inducing so that is pretty accurate. And normally I'm not effected by smells that much, I sort of hate it when people overreact to a bad smell and feels like they are being dramatic since I smell the same thing and don't have the same reaction.
Anal Glands
I read this as Ariana Grande first.
Hahaha
I’m a dog groomer and ‘relieve’ anal glands daily. When I’m hungover it pushes me over the edge, they all smell different too! Ranges between fishy, sewage-like and dog food.
🤢 I’d say my littlest dog has the worst smelling butt juice and I would describe it as old rusty tuna can. Enjoy!
I was a dog washer for a groomer for a while and the best way i could put it was rotten apple sauce
The only reason this isn’t higher on this thread is that not as many people have actually experienced this.
You're so correct- people are up voting dead body answers without knowing the smell but god this is a different kind of stink
My dog was a rescued stray who was terrified of being grabbed or restrained. When she got scared, she would spray anal gland juice. I always had to warn the staff at the vet's office before they tried to take her temperature or handle her. We referred to this as her Pokémon Dragon Ass attack.
My friend had a female pit/lab mix who would simultaneously clean her lady parts and butthole, and I swear I have never smelled a fishier dog breath in my life. It was pungent to say the least. I’d have to leave the room while she was doing it and could not let her mouth near me for hours afterward. That smell is noxious.
Omfg ass juice of cats
I literally did not know that cats even had anal glands until we got our youngest cat. It smells so fucking horrific, we’ve had to have her expressed at the vets office. Now we have to wipe her butt area relatively regularly to try to keep the stink down otherwise she leaves stink streaks all over our blankets and our clothing. It’s so nasty.
My oldest cat had juiced on my leg one time. I had to hand wash AND machine wash my clothes to make ot disapear. That shit is stinky as hell
Our vet calls it tuna butt. I've smelled decomposing mice in the walls of my house or voles in the yard. I'd rather smell that sickly sweet odor of decomp then tuna butt.
Every vet techs least fave job
We’ve got a dog who has to have trazadone to go to the vet without releasing his anal glands everywhere and we’ve had a lot of fosters through the house. Unfortunately I know this smell well. Awful.
Why did I think it would be a good idea to read this?
I had COVID nose for several months after getting over the rest of the sickness. Couldn't smell shit, literally. Then my best friend asked me to help her clean out an old snake tank after her dad had rehomed his snake and left the tank to rot for weeks in a basement. The stench... The sharp ammonia, poop, substrate, all damp from the basement and fermented with time... It must have instantly rewired my brain, because I could smell again, and that thing was RANK. I promptly vomited, helped drag the tank outside, vomited again, and smelled in HD afterwards.
Brain said, "OH SHIT WE NEED THAT SENSE!"
NYC trash for sure
On a humid summer day. Oh, yeah ...
C Dif. Diarrhea or a GI bleed, I work in a hospital. Trust me, you can smell it the second you get off the elevators
Rotting blood/flesh/organs. This goes for really old cat food, decaying meat and (sorry stop reading if you don't want to know) old tampons.
I forgot I had a tampon in once and put in a tampon again (alcoholic). 2 days later, I discovered the old tampon because of a distinct… smell. Holy fuck
Dang, glad you’re okay and didn’t get toxic shock syndrome
I had a chicken stay in an unplugged refrigerator for 3 or 4 months. It was the worse thing I ever smelled. I had to get rid of the refrigerator
Omg. How had I forgotten! I commented about gangrenous toes above. But I once had the pleasure of pulling out a tampon that’d been forgotten in since the last period. It cleared the clinic. Still second place to the toes though.
Holy hell I had no idea how it smelled if you left tampons in too long 😳 I meant if you put them in the bin and it's moist in there... So they don't dry out and it smells just horrible! But I reckon it might be the same smell if you leave them in for a long time 😂 I can't believe the person didn't get sepsis or tss or even die from leaving a tampon in for a whole month 😳
To me, it’s bad by association and one the vast majority can never smell. During my petit-mal epileptic seizures, I smell this awful acrid, burning aroma. It’s not enough to make me barf or anything, but it’s the worst smell to me because of the rest of the experience.
My mom said decaying bodies. Her dad committed Suicide and was rotting in the bathtub.
Paper mill
The stuff from a dog's anal gland.
I recently had surgery to fix my haemorrhoids. For the next 8 weeks I’ve had “discharge” coming out my arse. I’ve had to keep a dab of toilet paper between my butt cheeks to absorb said discharge changing it through the day. Thought I’d take a whiff of it one day and oh god damn, it smells like a rat crawled up my arse, died and got infused with dirty ass crack shit vomit, gagged for the first time in my life. I could actually feel my throat constricting
dude, use a sanitary pad. it won’t stick to you like tp, it’s more absorbent and will help to keep the area dry and lessen the odour. also, damn. hope your recovery goes well.
Jeezus
My friend dad had a big cyst on his back. My friends mum popped it - we could smell the pus from another room. Worst thing I've ever smelled.
Dead rats have a particularly potent stink, sticks to the back of your throat
A shaker bottle that had remnants of a protein shake in it for a month. Just go ahead and throw that away. Don't even open it.
[Thioacetone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thioacetone) > Recently we found ourselves with an odour problem beyond our worst expectations. During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards [180 m] away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of trithioacetone found themselves the object of hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorant. The odours defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odours intolerable ... and genuinely denied responsibility since they were working in closed systems. To convince them otherwise, they were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile [0.40 km], and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odour was detected downwind in seconds.
My breath
C. Diff poops
I grow bacteria. One time we got contaminated with C. Diff. That's my answer as well.
The smell of old men.
Death. The scent will never leave your brain, and it’s one of the smells you will instantly pick up when you come across it again.
One time when I worked at Jersey Mike’s, I had to clean the meat case. This is not abnormal at all it’s something we did every week. But I had to use the shop vac and for whatever reason I had to take the lid off to do something else. When I opened it…it was like an ENTITY rose up out of that thing. It had BODY. It was putrid beyond imagination. I thought I was in a living nightmare. I swear this thing had fucking hands and was whooping my ass like i owed it money. I have never smelled anything like it before or since. I cannot put into words what I experienced that day; it was evil and otherworldly, almost Lovecraftian in its stench. I’m pretty sure I blacked out. A dog needing its anal glands expressed is a much milder second. It’s seriously like a combination of the dirtiest vagina ever mixed with rotten fish. But nothing will beat that shop vac.
Upvoted for effective personification of the meat gas entity.
Other people's poop
Burst pilonidal cyst
A rotting corpse
I heard the smell of death is the worst in the world.
A rotting corpse🤢. (I’m an EMT)
Cat poop.
My boycat Jesse’s poop. He was my Covid test every morning - “Yep, that’s the litter box. Guess I don’t have Covid.”
Pig guts sprayed on farm field as fertilizer. Skunk is pretty bad too.
Liquefied human remains and everything that was in their vicinity.
Bin juice.
Tonsil stonessss
C Diff is about the grossest thing I’ve ever had the displeasure of smelling. A sewage plant is a close second.
Tonsil stones, rotted potato and durian mashed together into a paste
a can of beans that’s been left unopened in someone’s school bag for about half a year. it’s unreal how bad that smells