Worst Thing You've Ever Smelled?

[Mariposa Electrique]

Tell Me. What's The Worst Thing You've Ever Smelled?

 

[Epic Fail Man]

pajeets

 

[Solid Snek]

CS gas. It's not smell so much as the burning in your eyes. (and mouth, ears, nose, nails, and stomach)

 

[Mojo Thief]

For context, I grew up in a house that didn't have regular garbage collection, so we would often burn our garbage in a fire pit far in the back yard.

When my youngest sibling was a baby, they would shit up about a dozen diapers a day (probably exaggerating, but it sure seemed like it). They had one of those Diaper Champs (see below), which had to be emptied out every day or two. Now, there aren't many smells foul enough to make me gag, but the miasma that immediately rapes your nosehairs the moment the lid opened made me nauseous.

Now once we had too many poopy diaper bags, and garbage collection wasn't coming for another week, so they had me take about 10 bags of poopy diapers to the fire pit and pray to God the flames would cleanse them. I hurled into the middle of the pit and was met by a smell that I can only describe as a volcano's asshole after Indian night. This was decades ago, and I still remember the smell vividly: the overpowering reek of pure sulfuric ass, overlain by wet smoky mildew. I gagged so hard I couldn't breathe. I ran away and watched far away (and I made sure to stay upwind, not downwind) until the fire went out. The kicker was, the diapers didn't even disintegrate, so we still had to shovel these half-burned diapers filled with molten carbonized shit back into a bag and wait for garbage collection anyway.

To this day, I still haven't smelled anything that came close to the absolute wretchedness of twenty pounds of burning baby poop, and I've worked in municipal sewage treatment plants.

 

[Kendall Motor Oil]

Not to sound juvenile but period blood on a discarded pad from someone who likely had bacterial vaginosis but was in denial about it. After that, chicken soup in a glass jar I forgot to pressure can and sat out for months in the garage before being disposed of.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

One time my stove burners were particularly dirty, and conventional cleaning methods failed. I found some instructions online about sealing them in a bag with pure ammonia overnight to burn away the stuck on dirt.

Well, it (mostly) worked, but at the cost of burning off all my nose hairs as well. I was sporadically smelling ammonia for the next several days, even when I wasn't at home.

 

[glass_houses]

I worked in a wastewater (sewerage) laboratory for a few years. Human sewerage is comparatively low down the scale of foul. You want truly noxious, you want to open restaurant grease traps or the waste pipes of food primary production facilities. The drainage waste of a abbatoir was a good one, so was a fish market. Something that's surprisingly awful is avocado muck. Goes rancid something shocking.

But the thing that topped everything else- and the only time in all my years in the industry that I came close to losing my stomach- was three litres of solid, rancid fat spiced with cumin dug out of an Indian restaurant's grease trap. The smell went through the entire building, we had to open every single fucking window. The separate department downstairs rang up and complained.

It took me two years before I could walk past an Indian resturant without wanting to be violently ill, and three before I could eat a mild curry that I made myself. Still can't stomach the smell of cumin.

 

[Transniglet]

The pussy of a pretentious art hoe
HORRIBLE

 

[Amaranth]

Me and my friends found a dead body by the railroad, I still remember that day, we were 12 my buds Gordie, Teddy, and Vern all of us saw and smelled it, you see my buddy Gordie was going to report the body but Ace and his gang showed up and wanted credit, the cheap dime store hood pulled a switch blade but ol Gordie had a gun and threatened Ace and his gang to back off where we later reported the body anonymously to the police

 

[Meat Target]

I've journeyed to the center of a landfill (we missed large item pickup day). Imagine a valley of shit, vomit, and corpses, and driving on nothing but mountains of ash and trash.

 

[Honk Hill]

I worked in a wastewater (sewerage) laboratory for a few years. Human sewerage is comparatively low down the scale of foul. You want truly noxious, you want to open restaurant grease traps or the waste pipes of food primary production facilities. The drainage waste of a abbatoir was a good one, so was a fish market. Something that's surprisingly awful is avocado muck. Goes rancid something shocking.

But the thing that topped everything else- and the only time in all my years in the industry that I came close to losing my stomach- was three litres of solid, rancid fat spiced with cumin dug out of an Indian restaurant's grease trap. The smell went through the entire building, we had to open every single fucking window. The separate department downstairs rang up and complained.

It took me two years before I could walk past an Indian resturant without wanting to be violently ill, and three before I could eat a mild curry that I made myself. Still can't stomach the smell of cumin.

I have worked in various waste management jobs and trades where we do asbestos drops, etc. Grease traps at restaurants are ungodly I did that for 2 weeks, before it grossed me out. One company's yard I worked at was mostly construction/shop fitting yard but sometimes the truck drivers would drop general rubbish from hotels if other yards were closed or full. Normally all you could smell was the green waste bay which would get funky if it had any fruit from trees rotting. One hotel load with food waste, nappies etc, you don't wanna be down wind of that on a 35'c hot day, then having to scoop up, dump and compact the loads on top of dudes sweaty asses sharing a loader/excavator all day.

There where these huge skip bins we had to line for some government agency that do like bacteria testing on eggs, the liners would often split in transport so these skips had years of crusted on egg and shells, opening those lids was instant stomach quelch without a mask on.

Was driving a truck and trailer load of asbestos to a huge waste station, didn't follow the signs to the hazardous material section and ended in the main landfill where the council trucks dump residential waste, nearly threw up in the truck trying to reverse out.

 

[Exigent Circumcisions]

A truck full of dead animals on a hot summer day. I remember asking my mom how the man winching the dead, bloated cow onto the truck could do it without a gas mask.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

A kid who I was assigned and forced to sit next to on the bus I rode had the foulest B.O. stench, every day. It was so horrible I had to breath through my mouth instead of my nose.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

CS gas. It's not smell so much as the burning in your eyes. (and mouth, ears, nose, nails, and stomach)

Yeah, but it still smells like fireworks; those ones that turn into snake-shaped ashes. So good, right?

I've journeyed to the center of a landfill (we missed large item pickup day). Imagine a valley of shit, vomit, and corpses, and driving on nothing but mountains of ash and trash.

Now imagine if it was on fire, and you have what it was like living next to the Balad burn pits.

 

[Some JERK]

I used to work in a cotton mill. That didn't smell bad, but it was in the industrial area of town. To get to work, I had to drive past a huge winery, a potato chip factory, and a paper mill. There was one part of the year where all three were cooking along full steam. The combined stench was like something out of Revelations.

 

[Just A Fat Round Bird]

Cooked noodles that went bad and grew fungus. In general rotting wheat based products are just vile.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

I used to work in a cotton mill. That didn't smell bad, but it was in the industrial area of town. To get to work, I had to drive past a huge winery, a potato chip factory, and a paper mill. There was one part of the year where all three were cooking along full steam. The combined stench was like something out of Revelations.

Macon, Georgia is the worst for that reason alone; you can smell the place from I-75 long before seeing it.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

A woman came into the emergency department in fulminant septic shock of unknown origin. Immediately stabilized as best as possible and rapid evaluation to determine possible origins. She was wearing a tampon so it was removed since toxic shock syndrome was certainly quite possible. Removing it was like pulling the cork on an endless pit of death and decay. We knew that had to be the source of the problem. So, the attending ED doc bravely went to evaluate what was going on and shortly after beginning the exam had a funny look on his face. He asked if we were sure the tampon has been removed. Everyone looked at each other to ensure we were all sure and the nurse said that there was absolutely no doubt. The attending proclaimed that he felt what he believed was another tampon. We were all clearly quite surprised. So he went to remove it and produced something that was clearly shaped like a tampon, but resembled something that one would expect to see in a horror movie that had gone above and beyond all possible bounds of acceptable decency. The stench hit everyone shortly afterwards. Several people ran into the hallway to try and escape, to no avail. At that point it was obvious that the woman had a tampon in, and for inexplicable reason, had put another one in without removing the first one, forcing the first one back which allowed it to begin to rot. The room was unusable for about 2 weeks because despite the deepest cleaning possible, the stench somehow managed to continue to adhere to the walls. I think the staff got as close to PTSD as is possible without entering into an actual war zone.

 

[Wright]

Black people

 

[Mesh Gear Fox]

Somalis

 

[Isaac]

Fillipino food, or this mysterious stench emanating from the ice I smelt today. It was like a mix of sulfur, chlorine and dentist toothpaste. I first thought it was some real bad road ice, but now I'm not sure what it was.