What's the stinkiest odor you'e ever encountered?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

When I was a kid, I went fishing and all we caught were a few mudsharks.

I couldn’t be persuaded to let them go, because they were little sharks and therefore wicked cool. Had to bring them home, god knows why – I guess I had some vague idea of instant taxidermy or something. By the next day, the novelty had worn off, so I put them (still in a big bucket of water) under the crawlspace of my house, and therefore entirely out of my mind.

I don’t remember how long they were down there before the stink became apparent inside the house, but when it was recalled to my attention it was unbearable down there. For some reason, I’d put it quite far back in there, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but I could barely imagine going through there for the length of time it would take to get to it, much less back. I took a can of “garden fresh” air-freshener, fastened the nozzle down with thick rubber bands, and rolled it in, thinking it would make it easier to accomplish; and of course it just made it worse.

The crawlspace was only a few feet high, so moving this heavy bucket of rotting fish was impossible without being bent over with my face right over it – and as I struggled with it, it slopped up into my face and the front of my shirt. Exerting myself and trying not to breath at all, I was seriously afraid that I was going to faint in there, and sure that if I did, I’d die. (Heh.)

As soon as I got out into the light, I took a deep breath, hoping for relatively fresh air, but the stench was still overwhelming and I yakked up on the pavement.

The stink was hard to wash off, too. Bleagh.

42

Was Raymond really that bad? I thought there was a more or less theoretical limit to how bad a human could stink. Was it just that he hadn’t bathed? Or was it urine & feces?

One time I was in a store and there was this guy in a wheelchair with a colostomy bag. It was open and leaking fecal matter. Customers complained and the poor storekeeper had to tell the guy to leave. He raised a… ahem… stink about discrimination, etc.

One of the worst smells I’ve encountered was an outhouse hole-in-the-ground kind of thing at a Buddhist monastery in Russia, on a warm day. Oh, fuck that stank!

Other’s have mentioned decomposition. Was Raymond worse than that? I’m genuinely curious what it was about Raymond that stank so bad. I’ve been in the field without a bath for a few weeks and you definitely stink, but there seems to be a natural limit to funkiness.

43

Ahhhh…reading this thread makes me damned glad I have a strong constitution.

My ‘stinkiest’ odour story comes from travelling on public transport, at peak hour, in summer, sans air-conditioning, with one of our city’s psychiatrically and hygiene-challenged citizens sharing the commute. Someone who not only hadn’t showered or washed their clothes in a looooong time, but had been sleeping/urinating/defaecating in them for an equally loooooooong time.

There was no escape.

:eek:

44

Bivalve, NJ- behind the shellfish processing plant. It’s bad in the winter, but in the summer?

It’s so bad the smell has a color, and it’s black. Shellpile is the next town over, and the huge piles of shells (20ft +) seem like ambrosia in comparison.

I also ran across around 18 deer on the same motorcycle trip. Initially, I thought I was looking at an abandoned stinky carpet, until I noticed all of the skulls. All that was left was bones and fur, and the stinky-sweet brownish stench was very powerful.

45

Putrifying potato is the worst smell I’ve come across. After reading some of the posts above, I consider myself especially lucky.

46
  1. We have a feral cat in our neighborhood that only shows up in the summer. For the past two summers, she has given birth to a lone kitten in our backyard, which given our hyperactive dog, is perhaps the worst place in the neighborhood. The first summer, she disappeared a few days after and took the kitten with her after a day, we never saw the kitten again and assumed it must have died. The second time, she found a way into our garage with the kitten. I phoned the animal rescue people but she again disappeared and I presumed took the kitten with her. I, unfortunately, was wrong.

This is Houston summer. 95+ degrees with unbearable humidity, dipping into the high 80s overnight. About 4 days later, I began to smell something. Within a week, I was sure that there was dead kitten in a nook or cranny of my garage. I found it behind some faux wood paneling that the previous owners had left in the garage. It was covered with ants and its belly had burst. The smell, coming from the sub-1 pound, eyes-still-closed black-and-white kitten, was undescribable. I managed to move it into a garbage bag with a shovel. Only took me three retches. And I have a pretty hardened stomach from stuff like

  1. I have only retched actively three time in medical school. The first was my first autopsy. The guy was still pink – carbon monoxide suicide. I watched them slice open his chest, then pull of his face, then they opened the GI tract. The small bowel/large bowel/stomach was filled with half-digested food, gastric juices, and shit. The combination hit me like a slap in the face and caused immediate, autonomic retching.

The second was on my second month, when an intern did a rectal exam, pulled out a gloved finger covered in melena, sniffed it deeply, and exclaimed (almost excitedly) “Yup! That’s melena!” Melena and C. diff poop smells really bad.

But worse was a month later, with my first DKA’er. DKA people smell funny to begin with – a sickly sweet, acetone-y smell that is very characteristic and diagnostic of ketoacidosis. Unfortunately, this one also had bad diarrhea, was vomiting due to gastroparesis, and was altered mental status. This was in a room where we had a GI bleeder with active melena. Four people in a room in the county hospital. The nurses, to limit the smell, had closed the door in the room. I was the first in the room after a morning of two people shitting themselves, one with melena, plus one also vomiting over herself and add on top of that, like a putrid cherry, the acetone-y smell of ketoacidosis. When I opened the door, it was a wave of stink that came over me. It was the autopsy smell, basically times two, left to brew overnight in a closed room. It was all I could do to choke down a retch while examining the patient. I left the room and had to stand over a trash can for a while. It permeated my lab coat and shirt nearly instantly. Only a color-safe bleach got rid of that later, I had to change into an extra pair of scrubs that I carry for such an eventuality.

  1. The worst/most pungent smell I’ve ever had the pleasure of is less exciting. In basic chemistry lab, we used 14 N NH[sub]4[/sub]Cl, ammonium chloride. You know sniffing salts? Like that time 100. You are supposed to waft the fumes to test if it is the right chemical. As an 18 year old college freshman, I didn’t really have the understanding of this verb “waft.” So I took a long draft of air. It was a most interesting experience – like an electric shock of a sort. Something in my brain short-circuited, I couldn’t move, it took a few moments and all of my effort to move my arm to move the nalgene container of ammonium chloride away from my face. It pretty much fried my olfactory senses for a good few days after that as well…
47

I have smelled burning human flesh, (Cautery). I have smelled many forms of decomposition. I have smelled the BM of medical patients suffering inestinal bleeding. I have smelled the kind of BO that lingers for hours after the carrier has left the building. I have smelled animal and vegatable rot. I have smelled the fermenting of various barnyard animal fieces.

None of that is as bad as when I once shot a skunk at almost point blank range inside an old railroad blacksmith building in the middle of summer one night. Thankfully it was facing me. Its demise was quick, a .22 caliber air rifle slug directly into its brain. Upon its expiry, it vented its entire supply of skunk-stink. It was saving up.

It was as if someone had taken the most potent form of garlic, freshly peeled and slightly squeezed to bring out more juice, and rammed the cloves right up into my sinus passages. hard.

The guards at the site wouldn’t enter that building again for the rest of the summer.

48

Without question, a popped boil (or cluster of- a carbunkle) that smelled like I would olfactorily imagine the realms of Hell reserved for the Nazi General Staff, Charles Manson and the producers of the Anna Nicole Show would smell.

49

I have smelled many nasty smells. I work at an animal hospital.

We’ve had several clients that have smelled worse than their pets and since the exam rooms tend to be small it is pure torture to be in there. The smell often lingers for hours after they have left.

In stinky pet odors there’s tom cat pee - a really pungent one makes your eyes water and burns the hairs out of your nose. Canine Parvovirus diarrhea is very not pleasant. It’s bloody diarrhea with a hint of death smell - a big hint. Bleh.

We’ve had a few rotting corpses that the owners swear just died a few hours before and were outside in the 90 degree+ Florida summer heat. Had one dead dog’s skin rip off as we were pulling it onto the stretcher to carry it into the clinic. The colleague helping me was retching the whole time and I told her she could not throw up until we got inside and set the dog down.

I’ve helped with c-sections/pyometras where the puppies were actually dead and decomposing in the mother. Once we opened one up we could not breathe from the stench. The AC couldn’t handle it, we had to open all the doors and windows and turn on fans - not exactly the best for maintaining sterility but since the dog already had rotting corpses inside her we figured nothing that could blow or fly into the surgical site could be any worse than that.

Dog and cat dental problems can be pretty nasty. Strangely enough the thing that stinks the worst in pet mouths is when they groom themselves and get hair stuck up in their teeth. That stuff is nasty! Fortuately, it is a very concentrated nasty so you have to be near the animal’s mouth to smell it.

I think the worst smell has to be the maggots in rotten flesh smell. It’s a recognizable bad smell. I have many times walked by an exam room as a patient was put in the room and pulled the co-worker aside and said “that thing has maggots on it somewhere”. I am sure there are actual worse smells out there but this smell comes with the accompanying knowledge that I may be stuck dealing with maggots very soon. If the client decides to treat the pet and not euthanize somehow I am always the one who gets to remove the maggots - everyone else suddenly disappears. I can do this now only because after 20 some years I can now do it without constantly retching and I am very thorough because I can’t stand the idea of any of those damn things being left in there.

50

I have also worked in an Animal Hospital and right now work in a nursing home. Bad smeels are just part of my life at this point. One of the worst has to be Parvo. It is a disease, when dogs came in with it you could smell it a mile away. Ugg…

51

Decaying flesh is very distinctive, and I think it’s the knowledge of what it is that makes me gag when I smell it.
I worked at a chemical plant for a number of years, and we had an acetylene plant there. It took drums of calcium carbide, reacted it with water and pumped the resulting acetylene into cylinders. Acetylene smells a lot like rotting garlic, and when you’re producing it in industrial quantities it can be breathtakingly nauseating.
Also had the pleasure of close encounters with leaking SO2, chlorine and ammonia tanks. Overpoweringly pungent.
The worst was probably during a visit to the local natural gas pipeline facility. There was a shed, way out in a field, where they put in the odorant (mercaptan I believe). I had to go in to check something, and it felt like I was punched by the odor. Instant gagging.
I’d also have to give honorable mention to any paper/pulp mill in the heat of summer.

52

The vast open-air leather tannery I visited in Morocco (either Fes or Marrakech). Acres of rotting animal hide smell.

53

It was a combination of the same clothes for months without bathing, probably unwiped butt after defication and serious sweat while wearing winter clothing in 90= degree weather. The combination of that and the Right Guard was just unbelievable. I think about Raymond alot and hope he’s doing better.

I’ve never smelled a body dicomposing or a skunk. Rotting potatoes are pretty bad - they might come in second on my list. I’ve thrown good tupperware away rather than smell a science project that was lost in the back of the refrigerator.

54

The putrification of flesh.

55

Parvo diarrhea or hemorraghic gastroenteritis. Ugh. When the HG dog let loose, it was pure black liquid shitty blood. Thankfully, she was on the parking lot, and we could scrub it up as opposed to having to wait for it to sink into the dirt.

56

This thread is fascinating!

Thankfully, nothing I have ever smelled even comes close to what everyone here has described.

I have smelled rotting potato and it definitely is bad.

Also, fresh brocolli in a ziploc bag that has been left in the refrigerator too long. That is really bad.

57

I’ll second that. I’m into a more authentic Asian experience at a restaurant, so I was once eating at a true Chinese place in Monterey Park, California, when they brought out a plateful of this stuff to another table. It smelled just like someone had cooked up a big steamin’ plate o’ cat shit. Even the other Chinese customers were making disgusted faces at the smell.

I can eat the smelliest camemberts, livarots and goat cheeses imaginable, but the smell of that tofu just knocked me over. I still gag at the thought.

58

(And many others, above)

All right, y’all. I warned you not to challenge me in a gross-out contest. But did you listen? Did you call? Did you bring an assortment/

So you smell putrifying flesh somewhere on the road when you pass it. Big deal. Stop the car. Go get up close to it. Really, really close to it. Like, lean over it.

Okay, now put it on a waist-high table, and lean your belly over until yours touch its belly.

Now get a scalpel, and…

Do I win yet?

I have a lot further I can go. Heck, I’ve just begun.

Remember, I get to open up and work with the putrefying body and all its contents for about an hour and a half, on approximately the same close-up as a craftsman working on a project.

Putrefyng bodies are not all created equal. Oh no. You haven’t mentioned floaters. You haven’t mentioned the special kind of floater you get when a person dies in a sewage canal. The last-few-moments respiration of bacteria into the lungs creates a from-the-inside out putrefaction that is simply stunning.

How about the special thin and nasty funk of an exhumed body? Say one buried in a coastal region where the water table is high enough for water to get into the coffin. Anybody here know the particular odor of adipocere?

Best story I ever heard about really bad smells was from a fellow (I mean that literally, as in doing his fellowship) studying forensics down in Texas. Apparently, about a month before he began his year in July, one Texan killed another Texan, and put the corpse into a large metal box.

Which he then left.

In the sun.

In Texas.

When the metal box was discovered, a month and a half later, and strong men brought it into the medical examiner’s office (with tongs), the murdered Texan had turned into bones and soup.

Of a sort.

Oh, what a sort.

“First, the chief tech who had been there for twenty years threw up,” my informant told me. “Then, the Chief, Vincent DiMaio, threw up.”

I was aghast. A giant in the field of DiMaio’s stature threw up … at a smell?

“What did you do?” I begged.

“I threw up,” he said.

“Well, you kinda had to,” I agreed.

So there it is. I defy your skunks, your industrial chemicals, your poor BO’d out Raymonds. I defy your floaters and your exhumed ones and your mere putrefying flesh. I give you, for Worst Smell Ever Smelled -

Two-months-in-a-metal-box-in-the-desert Texan.

Mods, close thread.

59

I think I encountered a stinkier guy on the Robson St. bus a couple of years ago. It was fall, during rush hour, in the rain, standing room only. The guy got on and we were assaulted by the stink. Mostly a stale ammonia smell, but commingled with B.O., vomit, and feces. The immediate reaction was that every window in the bus was opened, which didn’t help at all. At the next stop, practically everyone bolted for the door, even though it was clear that there was no hope of us fitting on the next bus. The only thing to do was to walk the rest of the way; it was as though someone had discharged a tear-gas canister in there.

I guess that’s one way of being assured a seat.

60

Comedy gold! :smiley: