Worst non-bodily function related smell? (1 Viewer)

[Paul Padilla]

YES...Decomposition, regurgitation and excrement (human or otherwise) do count as bodily functions. Otherwise I would have included the time a transient relieved him/herself in the passenger seat of my car which I was unable to lock. No lie! Not a nice way to start out your day.


These are some interesting ones, though. Who would have thought dried strawberries?

Anyone familiar with dairy farming? No, not the cattle but what they're fed. Silage...fermented corn. During the summer truckloads of it would go through my little home town every day. They do the same thing with oats and hay which are muuuuuuuch worse. Might as well be a sewage truck.

 

[RichP]

I can't believe I'm the first to mention spoiled milk. I mean really spoiled milk, like expired 3 months ago and has been sealed in a container until you pop it open and unknowingly take a big whiff.

I think that's the only time I've ever wished for death to come quickly.

 

[Marc S Kessler]

My dad had a Ma and Pa grocery store and next door was an old fashioned fish market. The guy used to burn all the trash and fish guts in a 55 gallon barrel. This was back in the sixties and until this day I can't think of anything that smells worse.

 

[Citizen87645]

Maybe you should submit that to Mythbusters! I think it would only be "fatal" to those occupying the same space as you

To this day my nephew cringes at the mention of durian, ever since we transported one (uncut) 600 miles in the middle of summer. I don't mind the taste so much - it's the "durian burps" that linger for several hours after ingestion. This after only a teaspoon of it!

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

Burnt sand. Anyone who has worked in a steel foundry knows what I'm talking about.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Uwe Boll films.

 

[Richard Travale]

Cat urine/spray
scalded milk

 

[MarkHastings]

A friend of mine had spilled milk in his cars ventilation system (don't ask how ) - Everytime we'd turn on the heat - WOAH!

p.s. There's a dumpster from a movie theater in the parking lot of my work place. In the morning/afternoon sun, all of the nacho cheese, hot dogs and buttered popcorn, heats up and gives off one of the most foul smells imaginable!

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I grew up with that smell...and actually liked it. I admit though its an aquired taste

 

[Paul Padilla]

Actually silage is one that began to sort of like too. Kind of like whiskey that's not quite whiskey yet. But having to remove and repair tires on those trucks was no fun. Typically, the one place in the truck that was dripping was directly over the tire I had to fix, or directly over the axle I was jacking up.

"Oatlage" or "haylage" are different classes of smell entirely. Definitely Bog of Eternal Stench class.

 

[JeremySt]

One time I left container of earthworms in my tacklbox, in my hot garage for a couple weeks. When I opened the tacklbe box, I came close to passing out. I had to throw the tackle box away, even afer cleaning it out and soaking it in alcohol.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

I've heard it's gangrene, but I think burnt fat from a bovee (sp?) is pretty bad too.

 

[Don Giro]

The garbage truck that takes the fat and bones away from the meat company where I work (especially THIS time of year). YIKES!

As much as I love the fragrance of a freshly-cut lawn, you ever catch a sickly-sweet whiff of the cut grass when it's gathered together in a garbage bag? It's pure EVIL.

 

[Mark Dill]

Put a rubber toy in the microwave. (My experience was with one of those little skintone-colored Musclemen - remember those guys?)

Heat for 30 seconds.

Evacuate the area.

 

[Robert_Gaither]

If "worst" can be described as painful, smelling wasabi after it's been made after 1 min in a sealed container (at least this is how my mom taught me) will make anyone cry. I bet this could be used for torture as I've seen people sniff it close range by mistake and streams of tears shoot out of their eyes ("what is this... ahhh!!!").



Is this similar to "sticky-beans", sort of a reddish-brown bean that has a slimy-sauce (it's a dish I know served in Japan but I assume a similar version described differently in other countries)? My mom would eat this sometimes and I can't understand how hungry the first person in the world must of been to make a meal of this (I would have to assume that dung or a rotting corpse was not availible since it smelled much worse to me).

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Burning styrofoam. Then putting it out with human hair. Then putting that out with ammonia.

 

[Dick]

Easy Off oven cleaner ain't so great - it's more perfumed now than it used to be, but still pretty potent.

 

[Mike Graham]

Pulp and paper mills probably take the cake here: I've been working at one this past summer and the summer before that, and some of the chemicals they use have made my throat burn and my stomach almost send my lunch back.

 

[Jim_F]

Heavy metal antidote dimercaprol (AKA BAL) For an idea of the odor, imagine the smell of a burning skunk carcass.

 

[GordonL]

From the Guiness Book of World Records:

Smelliest Molecule:
Ethyl mercaptan (C2H5SH) and butyl seleno-mercaptan (C4H9SeH) could claim to be the worst of the 17,000 smells classified to date. The former is man-made, and the latter is found in skunk spray. Both contain sulfur, the source of their pungent odor. Ethyl mercaptan is toxic, and in sufficient doses will cause headaches, nausea, lack of coordination, and liver and kidney damage.

Smelliest Substance:
The smelliest substances on Earth are the manmade "Who-Me?" and "US Government Standard Bathroom Malodor", which have five and eight chemical ingredients respectively. “Bathroom Malodor” was developed by chemists in America as a way of testing the effectiveness of deodorants and air fresheners. It emits an incredibly unpleasant odor that resembles human feces. “It’s very pungent,” explains Paul Dalton of the Model Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “It fills your head and gets to you in ways that are unimaginable.”

”Who Me?” on the other hand has a different but equally overwhelming stench. The sulphur-based substance smells of rotting food and carcasses. It was originally developed during the Second World War when it was hoped French resistance fighters would be able to humiliate and embarrass German soldiers by making them smell horrific. The idea came to nothing since it was impossible to properly target the smell – instead, it ended up polluting large areas.

The US Government has now resumed a program to look at possible military applications of these substances. It’s hoped they could be modified and used as giant stink bombs to disperse rioting crowds or to keep warring factions apart.