What is the worst thing you've ever smelled?

[RedAngie]

Durian fruit in street markets in Hong Kong. Even before they're cut open they reek.

 

[PigletsPal2]

Durian fruit in street markets in Hong Kong. Even before they're cut open they reek.

I was wondering if anyone else would mention durian - it's horrible!

Queen Colleen

 

[mi*vida*loca]

A patients tampon that she left inside her for about 1-2 weeks. She smelled a funny odor and decided to come in. Upon further examination the tampon was found. I have no idea how she waited that long. It was a greenish gray and the smell was horrific. It looked like a mouse with the string.

This was actually pretty common.

 

[Carriemel]

So, my hubby and I left on our honeymoon, 2 weeks in Hawaii.

He flipped the breakers on the lights in the kitchen.

Nah, just kidding! The breakers were mislabeled.

The fridge was off for 2 FULL weeks.

Everything in the fridge/freezer was off. Period.

We, on the day we returned, had to buy a new fridge. There is NO recovering from a STANK that bad.

 

[Southernmiss]

Ds18's goalie gloves.

Keeper gloves are nasty! And their soccer shoes, ugh!

 

[Jennasis]

My uncle came to visit and went to change his bandage on a foot wound that had turned gangrenous. The whole house smelled like a decomposing corpse.

 

[Imnatari]

I'm an ER nurse... I will leave it at that.

 

[bcla]

Durian fruit in street markets in Hong Kong. Even before they're cut open they reek.

I've smelled durian before. Even accidentally ate something that contained it and spit it out. It's an offensive smell for sure. Some of the descriptions are that the smell changes with proximity. One time I thought it smelled like ripe urine in a public bathroom that hadn't been hosed down yet. Or like a group fart.

Come to think of it, one pretty bad smell is sulfurous gases from geothermal features. There's a variety of nasty smells at Yellowstone. Black Dragon Cauldron is pretty intense. It may not beat Kilauea for sheer stink though. I've heard it described as the smell of a thousand farts. The National Park Service closes down the road when the levels are so high that people get physically sick.

 

[bcla]

My uncle came to visit and went to change his bandage on a foot wound that had turned gangrenous. The whole house smelled like a decomposing corpse.

Ah. My cousin is married to a doctor. He's told me about all sorts of stuff that happened in his hospitals, including the kid whose foot was trapped at BTMRR in Disneyland. He was a resident at the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, where the kid was treated. However, the nastiest may have been a patient who complained about numbness in his foot. When he examined it, he found maggots growing there. They eventually amputated. Must have smelled great.

Kind of reminds me of a line in the HBO Series Westworld. The decommissioned hosts were stored in a holding area where the cooling system died. The head of security says that "it's going to smell fantastic" to try to dissuade someone from tagging along.

 

[Jennasis]

Another good one is the paper mill along I-95 in Georgia. Every we pass that section of 95 when we drive to/from Florida we both laugh uncontrollably...it's like a mega fart.

 

[tvguy]

Had a rat die in the ceiling above the control room of a station I used to work at. We had no choice but to work in there to get shows on, the boss's concession to help us was to buy a jar of Vicks Vapo Rub and suggest we put a dab under out noses to block the rat smell.

Early in my career, 3 bodies were found in a bunk house in a remote US Forest Service facility that was closed for the winter . They had gotten lost months before, and apparently broke in and died inside there. The bodies were gone by the time I got there, had to drive 5 miles on an unpaved logging road to get there. The smell, however, was NOT gone.

 

[ronandannette]

• A mountain of rotting fish skeletons outside a cannery in Ensenada, in the 90F heat (I smelled this from a bit of a distance).
• A slimy, moldy, putrid dishrag in a sink full of dishwater that had sat while we were away on holidays for a week (I smelled this one up close).

 

[ronandannette]

Had a rat die in the ceiling above the control room of a station I used to work at. We had no choice but to work in there to get shows on, the boss's concession to help us was to buy a jar of Vicks Vapo Rub and suggest we put a dab under out noses to block the rat smell.

Early in my career, 3 bodies were found in a bunk house in a remote US Forest Service facility that was closed for the winter . They had gotten lost months before, and apparently broke in and died inside there. The bodies were gone by the time I got there, had to drive 5 miles on an unpaved logging road to get there. The smell, however, was NOT gone.

That was actually a valid approach - it's what we used (inside face-masks) at the funeral home I worked at. For the public areas, there were unobtrusive, decorative containers filled with ground coffee all over the place.

 

[tvguy]

That was actually a valid approach - it's what we used (inside face-masks) at the funeral home I worked at. For the public areas, there were unobtrusive, decorative containers filled with ground coffee all over the place.

That must have been where he got the idea.

 

[Diznygrl]

That must have been where he got the idea.

Or perhaps he got the idea from Silence of the Lambs.

 

[Jestocost]

My roommate's bean sprouts that sat in a jar in the dorm room and went rotten over Christmas break. He opened the jar and people at the other end of the hallway with their doors closed came out and asked what the smell was. We turned it up a notch by letting the jar sit on the radiator for a week and then locked another roommate in the closet with them.

 

[Cinderella94]

a group fart.

I'm sorry but this made me crack up laughing out loud!!

ETA: I just got to the rest of your post to the "the smell of a thousand farts." Oh my goodness

 

[marthachick]

Either DSs receiving gloves from football or a pit toilet at Arches National Park on a 104 degree day.

 

[ronandannette]

I have a ranking of horrible animal poops.

Sea lion is the worst.
Cheetahs was second.
Bald eagles is third.

Once on a whale-watching excursion we came within proximity of a light-house station on Vancouver Island that had hundreds of them on it - O.M.G. I was raised on a farm that produced cattle, pigs and chickens - all of their manure put together, wetted down and left to ripen under the heat of 1,000 suns for a century would not have smelled 1/2 as bad as those sea lions.

 

[sonnyjane]

Once on a whale-watching excursion we came within proximity of a light-house station on Vancouver Island that had hundreds of them on it - O.M.G. I was raised on a farm that produced cattle, pigs and chickens - all of their manure put together, wetted down and left to ripen under the heat of 1,000 suns for a century would not have smelled 1/2 as bad as those sea lions.

Race Rocks. I know it well! Summer is the worst. That's when the males develop their natural "musk" on top of the smell of the poop!