This thread stinks.
A few years back some construction workers were making some changes to part of the building I worked in. One of them used a sledge hammer to smash through not only a wall, but also a cardboard milk container that someone had prankishly left there 15 years earlier.
The first time I encountered the worst smell on Earth was at a friend’s home. Well, not just a friend, a member of our gaming group. Gamers, you know what I mean. You’ve all smelled the funk of geekery. This was where the funk of geekery lived. I actually think the blasting cold air conditioner made it worse. It was frosty Frumundi.
The second time was when I worked at a local convenience store that sold fried chicken as part of its hot bar. The chicken was ordered from God knows where and then stacked on a metal shelf inside the cooler. The boxes always looked like they’d been stomped on by elephants before they got to us, so, of course, they leaked. Now, the owner was a lazy drunk who loved being a smart fish in a pond of dumbasses, so he would come to the store every day to dazzle us with his wit, stock the cooler and drink away his profits. And, before he would leave he’d tell us that the next time he was in, he’d clean up the chicken shelf. Boxes came and went and dripped and always, ‘he’d do it next time.’ Of course you know what happened. One evening, I was left instructions that the chicken shelf had to be cleaned STAT. Weeks and weeks of congealed blood. The mop & bucket looked like part of a murder scene when I was finished. The only thing that kept me from puking was the inch thick layer of Vaporub on my upper lip.
The third time was when I had to scoop a dead snail out of the fish tank. At least, I thought it was dead. I had to check to be sure. Wouldn’t want to toss out a live animal, of course. An aquarium snail is only as big around as, say, a quarter, so I was completely unprepared for the hulking stench that appeared when I pulled the snail from the shell. I saw stars. I went weak at the knees. And, I tried desperately to keep from dropping it because I knew that if that little nugget of Armageddon hit the floor, the smell would never leave the apartment. The icing on that cake was the wife poking her head into the room after it was all said & done, and asking “Are you ok?” Yeah.
I hope I don’t have a fourth encounter. I think it would kill me.
One year on a beach vacation we thought it would be a good idea to collect shells. What we didn’t get was that most of them had living parasites on them. Living, of course, until they stayed in out hotel room for a few days. We couldn’t put them in the trash, because they’d still be in the room. We couldn’t put them in the car to dump them somewhere, because they’d stink up the car. I think we ended up paying the housekeeper a fiver to take care of it for us.
I wanted to say two things to you:
First of all, thank you for doing that, even though it was part of your job. Daughter was most likely very grateful.
Second, your description and possible responses are very amusing, even if it is a morbid subject. 
As for my entry, it’s got to be potatoes. Bodies and all that certainly do stink, but you would never expect it of the yummy, delicious potato, but when you lose a potato you find that motherf-er before he goes bad. Or YOU WILL NEVER FORGET.
The worst smell ever IMHO, saw a guy burn to death inside his car, the smell is very distinct and overwhelms the odors of the burning plastic,fuel etc. Its not that the odor is that offensive, I just cant separate it from the experience and I remember it well, I can smell it right now. This happened 20+ years ago.
Capt
I think I worked with that guy! Federal contractor job so not exactly homeless. His funk was so greasy and alive, that to ride an elevator after he had exited became an exercise to see how long we could hold our breath. He left vapor trails that physically assaulted the senses, and we could tell exactly where he’d been long after he’d passed.
He was actually banned from several floors - unfortunately not mine. I did feel bad for him. There was something other than just lack of hygiene going on there.
I worked with a guy who was from Thailand I think. His diet apparently consisted mainly of garlic. It came out his pores. When he had been working hard (he was an auto mechanic) and began to sweat, then came in to the tiny little dispatch office, you could see the garlic in the air. I love garlic but omg that was unpleasant.
Someone mentioned paper mill in passing up there; boy, that’s an aroma that stays with you. Kinda like outhouse gone wild.
The worst smell ever. Thirty some years ago I worked on a hog farm during the summers. Part of my job was when the sows farrowed, I sat all day in the farrowing house, grabbing newly born piglets and putting them temporarily in a box full of straw, so the sows did not step on them until the sows calmed down.
It genuinely was a delightful job, because baby pigs are so cute. But I also had to pick up the afterbirth, which I put in plastic buckets to keep the sows from eating it (I forget why). Then I would put the buckets in the back of the bosses’ pickup truck, and we would eventually dump the buckets in the woods for varmints to eat.
One year, for some reason, the boss failed to move the truck and dump the buckets for several days, and the afterbirth sat there in the sun and rotted. Nothing I’ve smelled since has come close.
One night camping on the beach my dog dug up a dead sea lion and rolled in it. The horror! Truly the worst combination stench of rotten meat and fish.
OMG dead snails. I had [del]forgotten[/del] blocked that out. It happened to me once while I was on a business trip. I returned home to the funk, and had to make several breath-holding forays into the apt to open the windows. Didn’t even stay to find out what the problem was, just grabbed my suitcase and headed back out to find a hotel room.
When I got back next day the neighbors were all seriously pissed about the smell. I was more concerned that a homeless person had broken in to find a place to sleep and then died in my apt.
Turns out one tiny dead snail made all that funk! I can’t believe the other fish in the aquarium hadn’t committed hari kari to get away from it. I did 50% water changes morning and night for a week; and ended up throwing away the whole filter when daily filter/carbon changes didn’t remove the odor.
Had a similar experience with cyanobacteria infection in the 100 gallon. Unbevlieveably stinky little critters they are.
Porta John still gets the prize though.
One word: Durian.
Been fortunate enough to have not had to whiff a human rotting away, but have had the misadventure to haul a few sheep off in the process of decomp.
You know its bad when you pick them up and they* leak!*
Never been motivated to come up with a term for that perticular funk.
When I was eight or so I followed a scent out to our garage one hot Summer day to find our mutt’s two puppies each munching away on halves of a rotting, maggoty, dead cat. As the discoveror of said bounty I was elected to clean it up.
I know that I did it, but, thankfully, I somehow managed to completely block the memory of the entire chore.
A week later my Mom took the pups to the dogpound, because, despite several attempts at washing, they still stank enough to make eyes water at a distance.
The worst smell I truly remember may be partly due to context.
Shortly after the Loma Prieta quake a (former) friend and I had reason to be near the collapsed Cypress Structure, where victims were still being recovered. He insisted on driving by the site, and as a passenger my protests meant little.
At one point he made an audible sniff and (innocently I believe) asked, “Is there a barbeque place around here?” Just then the incredible smell of burning human flesh (I never smelled it before or since, but I instinctively know that was what it was) physically assaulted me.
The smell alone was bad enough, but the suggestion planted in my mind just prior of a relation to food was too much. I opened the car door and thoroughly de-lunched myself on the spot–which did not add positively to the bouquet.
Paper mill! I’d forgotten that years ago as a boy in Savannah every so often there’d be a wind shift and my entire neighborhood would be inundated by a foul smell. I was told that it came from the Union Bag plant which was miles from our house.
In college, my ChemE Design class was in a room immediately after an EE class. The reek of foul, unwashed EEs permeated the room to such an extent after their class that the first poor soul to arrive for our class was obliged to dash in, open all the windows (no matter how cold outside!) and then we’d wait outside for fifteen minutes or so for the room to air out. Still smelled like funk. A few times our professor canceled class because of the BO stench – even though he’d often joked it was “training for our careers at chemical plants”.
Nowadays, I work at a chemical plant as a process chemist (/engineer) on sulfur chemistry products. Ofttimes I have to stop to buy Prell shampoo, as it’s the only stuff that will get rid of the sulfury smells. Daily assaulted by hydrogen sulfide, mercaptans, and other assorted stenches*, I have to say… the BO of college electrical engineers was still worse. Mostly because of the knowledge that it was people generating that reek.
Ohh. I remembered a good one. My dad was a serious fisherman. We had a large freezer in the garage dedicated to bait. Filled with stuff like squid, shrimp, cigar minnows and such. Well, at some point during a lull in the fishing, the freezer up and died. So, for a week or three all that stuff sat in there rotting and fermenting away. Stinky it was (rotting mitochlorians are bad don’t cha know). Freezer got retired to the dump as well despite valiant efforts on my dad’s part to clean and sterilize it.
Though it’s nothing compared to the weapons-grade odors in this thread, the sheer determination of the smell of Bingo Hall needs to have a place at the putrid table. One evening a month I work as a volunteer for our high school band and come home smelling like rancid grease, stale air, and desperation. I can only imagine what this place smelled like in the days before the smoking ban, for it appears fully 80 percent of the patrons leave for smoke breaks.
I worked last night and hung up my clothes to air out during the night. I didn’t want to contaminate the entire dirty clothes basket with the smell and, I vainly hoped, maybe I could get away with not washing the sweater I wore. There was no perceptible difference in the stench from the night before.
Ew yeah, paper mill.
You can replicate that smell with a week old diaper, perm solution, and a blow torch.
In '04 I helped after Hurricane Ivan. Power was out for months in some cases, and thousands
of refrigerators contents putrified. You tried not to open them but they leaked
horrible “gravy” that got all over when you carried them to the curb.
The smell could gag a maggot.
Many years ago, my best friend had an ulcer rupture in his stomach and had blood coming out both ends. He was rushed to the hospital and they ended up removing half his stomach.
For a week or more he could only get ice chips, so he had almost nothing in his system, so he didn’t need to poop for a long time. As he got to the point where he could take liquids, his system started moving again, but all that had been in his gut all this time was mostly blood.
I was visiting him at the hospital one day when he finally felt the need to poop (which was a good sign and something the staff had been waiting for), so I had to help him from his bed to the bathroom. He got himself settled down on the pot and pooped … something … for the first time in a week.
I assume it was old digested blood, but whatever it was, it was absolutely horrible. I had to stay with him in case he passed out and to hold his IV support, but it was all I could do to keep my own stomach contents down.
Positively the most sickening smell I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.
Even now, 30+ years later, he still passes some truly putrid fats, but nothing like what he vented that day.
Back in the day when I was a deputy sheriff, I had to help on a “suspicious odor” call. It was a guy that had managed to mix prescription drugs with a bunch of booze and died in a closed house with no a/c, in the middle of summer.
He was all over the walls and ceiling by the time we got to him. That’s when I learned the trick of dumping coffee in a skillet and setting it over an open flame. That’s also why I have trouble making coffee - whenever I open the can or the package, I get a whiff of it and start looking for dead bodies.