Foo - Worst smell ever

Okay this has nothing to do with lycra +humidity+B.O. (unless you have a baaaaaaad medical condition). What's the most gag inflecting, nostril invading, nausea sustaining smell you've ever come across?:mad:

Here goes:

Rotting whale carcass. Years ago while on Cape Cod with the USCG, we were called in to tow a dead humpback out of the shipping channel. Oh yeah, it was bad. We had to stay there breathing it in for an hour while the biologists were getting their measurements. At least this time we didn't have to get in the water to attach the tow line.:D

Similar: rotting Chinook Salmon carcass on a stream in NE Indiana. Didn't smell it until I snagged it with a branch and pulled it up on the bank. Big mistake.:eek:

Hockey bag after a full season.

Back in high school, I had to drive my mothers car for a few days while mine was in the shop either getting repaired from a wreck or a mechanical failure or both. Anyway, since I was driving a four door Pontiac Bonneville with a 403, I was pretty much the designated driver at lunch time on those days.

On the first day, we noticed an unsavory odor in her car. Each day at lunch, it seemed to get progressively worse, until finally, we decided to search for the source of the odor.

We open the trunk and find a cooler and a very bad smell. We open the cooler to find a decomposing large mouth bass and some really nasty liquid and an odor that immediately made my stomach turn in upon itself, causing an immediate upheaval of my freshly eaten Big Mac, fries and coke. Cooler and all went immediately into the McDonald's dumpster, which strangely, seemed to smell better after that.

For the rest of our senior year, the four of us in teh car would pass each and recite the fateful words, "Remember the dead bass." I bet to this day if I saw Tad, or the other Jeff or Andy, they would still look at me and say "Remember the dead bass."

On a more morbid note, having to go into the kithcen of my uncles house in San Antonio after he was murdered and see and smell the blood is a horrible odor that I will never forget. The police and crime scene investigators had already been there, and warned us of the scene. My father could not bear to see this, as it was his brother who had been killed, so the chore of going in and doing some "coverup" fell to my brother and I. Probably the worst thing I ever had to do in my life.

A pile from a 10-1/2 snake who was a healthy eater and took poos about every 2 weeks or so. Dinner plate sized thing that put a big shepard to shame, that gave me the dry heaves when cleaning it up. And it takes a lot for me to do that. <shudder>

I had a roommate in college with the. worst. breath.

In fact, people that remember her will ask what happened of said roommate, and when I mention we don't keep in touch, I'd say 7 times out of 10 someone mentions her bad breath.

I do realize that halitosis is a medical condition. However, she had nasty teeth I dont think she brushed well or often, and always used this weird toothpaste. Usually the orange flavor, sometimes cinnamon. That can't possibly help...

http://www.glow.ca/Glow/GlowDocs.nsf/Images/PR-TORO-6MWLG5/$File/05_03_crest_lrg.jpg

Probably the bigger issue is that she was not a nice person, which made everything else seem so much worse!

This isnt the worst smell, but its constant. Where I work is situated between a bakery and a sewage treatment plant. Depending on weather, you smell cinnamon rolls or sewage.

A dead and decaying skunk....gag.

I found a deceased neighbor by the odor that was coming out of his apartment. We thought he'd gone to see family for a month, apparently he didn't even have family. He told us he was catching a midnight flight, and apparently overdosed on sleeping pills. No sign of depression, either, he took great joy in life. We found out later that he'd just gotten a diagnosis of AIDS. :(

If we hadn't thought he'd gone out of town, we'd have checked on him.

Cast iron faeces

Wet dog rolled in rotting fish.

I have two, and one isn't, technically, a smell...

The first was when I was living in south carolina for a while, we were situated between a swamp and a paper mill... if it wasn't for central air conditioning we'd have died of stink.

The second, non-smell, one was while riding around a long while ago, someone had recently, and I mean within a couple minutes of my arrival, run over a skunk and I went through the area breathing hard through my mouth since it was an uphill climb... This is when I discovered that skunk tastes as bad as it smells and I can't recommend it to anyone unless I really, really don't like them.

I practically retched when a truck filled with rotting cattle carcasses passed me by a few years ago. Just thinking about it still makes me feel sick.

When I was an EMT many years ago, we were en route back to the garage from a DOA call at about 5am when we were called to a car fire resulting from car vs train. We arrived to find the car fully engulfed. The driver of the car never got out.

Tri Chloro Anisol otherwise known as cork taint. Normal people sense it at 3 to 4 parts per Trillion.

A dead and decaying skunk....gag.

My dog after playing with said carcass.

Baby ****(poo).

I opened a tupperware container (one of the shaker ones with the button push tops) that my Mom had used to make Hidden Valley Ranch, only she put it back in the cupboard rather than the refrigerator by accident. It had been sitting there for months... The reaction was similar to the opening of the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders...

http://www.theraider.net/films/raiders/gallery/makingof/mo_77.jpg

So human curiousity being what it is... After recovering you say to yourself "It can't be as bad as I thought it was" and you do it again...

NOPE! IT'S STILL CRYPT DEATH SMELL!!!

http://www.theraider.net/films/raiders/gallery/makingof/mo_77.jpg

Burnt bone dust during a medical autopsy which is generated usually when they use a bone saw to cut open the skull...

The saw blade vibrates back and forth at a high speed. It'll cut through hard material (i.e. bone) but will leave the flesh intact. However the high vibration speed means the blade is rubbing against the cut surface and heating up and any bone dust that hits the blade gets charred. The smell is almost instantly vomit inducing if you're not used to it. :(

Burnt bone dust during a medical autopsy which is generated usually when they use a bone saw to cut open the skull...

The saw blade vibrates back and forth at a high speed. It'll cut through hard material (i.e. bone) but will leave the flesh intact. However the high vibration speed means the blade is rubbing against the cut surface and heating up and any bone dust that hits the blade gets charred. The smell is almost instantly vomit inducing if you're not used to it. :(

To me that smells like burning hair.

My old neighbors raised chickens for Gold-n-Plump. After the chickens were sent to meet their maker they would clean out the chicken s**t from the pits. Mix that in with a bunch of dead chickens and you have one fine smell of evil....

A while back my commute (on mondays) would invariably put me behind a garbage truck doing the restaraunt run in the early morning. It seamed as if no matter what time I ended up on that particular road (Lyndale ave) That damn truck would be up ahead of me. It was the most awful sour decaying liquid nasty smell I have ever experianced. What made it worse is at that point I was always coming off a big push, so the stomach was a bit jiggley to begin with. Just thinking about it is making my mouth do the pre barf salivating thing...

The putrid reek of fish + earthworms accidentally left in a cooler for 2wks.

I was walking one night back home and a garbage truck was backing up. There was a guy directing it to a pile, and either as a joke or by accident the truck slammed on the brakes sending a wave of green-brown liquid all over the guy directing it. He just shook his hands and started throwing bags - I almost threw up right then and there.

The most nauseating smell was probably the months after 9-11. I lived in the area and every day I'd smell the fires smoldering - combination of concrete, combustible office stuff (carpet, chairs, etc...), and that burning hair smell which was a constant reminder of those that didn't make it out. It took a long, long time before the fires went out.

LOL ROTLA FTW!


My olfactory systems are sort of muted...I win again!:D

To me that smells like burning hair.

It does to me too. Same with a dentist's drill.

Cat poop that has been piling up. I couldn't even stand there for a second to clean it. My eyes teared up.

Not an actual smell (yet?) but...

Had a coworker who decided to keep a staff meeting bagel in a tin for, oh, 14 years (and counting). Hasn't opened it yet, not sure if/when he plans to. I'm not even sure if the bagel even exists any more or has transmorgified within its sarcophogus (sp?). It's possible that it has passed through the smelly stage and moved on to the mummified stage.

Riddle me this, Batman: If something smells horrible, but the smell is contained (and thus can't be smelled), does it still smell?

Titan Arum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_arum

Not necessarily a bad funky type smell, just one that gives me the heebee geebees.

When going through training, we had a call for a suicide. Upon arrival there was a man, sitting on the couch, the shotgun on the floor by his feet. It appears that he had shot himself under the chin, and there was nothing much left above his shoulders. I had never seen anything like this before and had carefully moved closer, avoiding disrupting evidence. Leaning over and peering at the corpse, and taking in the fresh smell of blood and expelled shotgun, I felt something hit my head and land in my hair. I reached up, wondering what it was, only to gather brain matter. I looked up and saw the freshly decorated ceiling, slowly releasing the solid matter that gave way to gravity. The smell and feel of that on my hand is something I will never, ever forget.

wow that's gnarly.

I forgot to mention the time I had to pump the holding tank on a sailboat. It was so full that "biological processes" and the Texas heat had pressurized it. I however, did not know this at the time. So I pull the boat up to the pump out station, open the anchor storage locker to access the pump out port, and this is where things went rapidly bad.

I begin to unscrew the lid and as soon as the last thread releases, the pent up forces of hell that were the contents of the septic system of that boat cried war and let fly their foulness upon me. I was hit full in the face by a geyser of human waste, septic chemicals and only God knows what else.

I began retching, puking and diving overboard as fast as a fully grown adult male Jsharr can move.

I had almost completely blocked that memory out, but thanks to this wonderful thread, I think I need to go throw up and shower now. Maybe I will do both at the simultaneously, just for old times sake.

I forgot to mention the time I had to pump the holding tank on a sailboat. It was so full that "biological processes" and the Texas heat had pressurized it. I however, did not know this at the time. So I pull the boat up to the pump out station, open the anchor storage locker to access the pump out port, and this is where things went rapidly bad.

I begin to unscrew the lid and as soon as the last thread releases, the pent up forces of hell that were the contents of the septic system of that boat cried war and let fly their foulness upon me. I was hit full in the face by a geyser of human waste, septic chemicals and only God knows what else.

I began retching, puking and diving overboard as fast as a fully grown adult male Jsharr can move.

I had almost completely blocked that memory out, but thanks to this wonderful thread, I think I need to go throw up and shower now. Maybe I will do both at the simultaneously, just for old times sake.

Thanks for the warning. when I start sailing, I will remember to keep said container as emptied as possible.

Thanks for the warning. when I start sailing, I will remember to keep said container as emptied as possible.

Real men piss into the wind anyway.

Real men piss into the wind anyway.

The pissing is not what I am concerned about. That will be mostly beer anyway.

Buckets are for more than bailing. just saying.:innocent:

yes they are...they are for those days when the water is a little too rough and the Dramamine is not strong enough.

You keep talking about seasickness and using the bathroom on a boat, and i will lose the tiny modicum of respect that I have for you.

You keep talking about seasickness and using the bathroom on a boat, and i will lose the tiny modicum of respect that I have for you.

respect? don't even know what that is.

It is what we lost for you in Aug of 07

It is what we lost for you in Aug of 07

wasn't me you're honor. don't know who it was, but it wasn't me.

Used heavy wieght gear oil is a pretty rank smell.

I once was in a supermarket during the summer and we were having a heat wave with 100+ temps. A van load of old amish women came in. Man, you talk about putrid. I could not go down an aisle after they had been there. It wasn't your typical B.O. either. It was a female type of smell.
Give me a rotting deer any day.

An open top metal 55 gallon drum filled to the brim with rainbow trout/steelhead guts putrefying in the summer sun (at a trout farm where I worked as a kid.)

My friend deals with amines in his lab work - think dead fish concentrates.

Smelled the dead-things pit at work a few years back - all the roadkill you could ever want thrown into a pit and let to smoulder in the heat of the sun. Also smelled the slaughterhouse on I-5 in SoCal...for ten miles either way. Also, farmlands where the water used for sprinklers is recycled from the field - and the field is fertilized with cow dung.


Not an actual smell (yet?) but...

Had a coworker who decided to keep a staff meeting bagel in a tin for, oh, 14 years (and counting). Hasn't opened it yet, not sure if/when he plans to. I'm not even sure if the bagel even exists any more or has transmorgified within its sarcophogus (sp?). It's possible that it has passed through the smelly stage and moved on to the mummified stage.

Riddle me this, Batman: If something smells horrible, but the smell is contained (and thus can't be smelled), does it still smell?

Strangely, we had a bagel in my dormroom that was of an unidentifiable era. It appeared in our room one day and never really left. We were hesitant to throw out what wasn't ours. It remained for months. And didn't smell one bit. The original cinnamon smell disappeared eventually. The bagel had low enough water content that it simply dried out and hardened up. It was used as a gavel of sorts.

Since the OP mentioned a whale I thought I would throw this in.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_t44siFyb4&feature=related



As for smell.....I flunked out of college and was a meter reader for a year for the college, which was a small resale electric utility. There was a river running next to the campus and a trailer park beside the river that was mostly occupied by students. One summer I was told to disconnect a meter, and as it turns out, the wrong meter. The trailer was being rented by a student who had gone home for the summer......right after he had filled the freezer with fish from the river. Three months in the summer sun. Supposedly they threw up immediately upon opening the fridge.

The college sent workers to try to clean the fridge, but in the end they just had to buy the trailer owner a new one.

I was sweating bullets until I checked the records to confirm that I had turned off the right meter.

My tour of the cities WWTP... wow, by far the worst smell ive ever experienced.

I have two:

One was a concentrated liquid chicken poop stuff my mom used to get at some plant store for her plants. It could only be opened outdoors.

The other was a ping pong ball that caught fire (long story) and burned up within 45 seconds. The smell of it was horrendous.

For me it has to be the dead and decaying carcass of some unknown large animal (presumably a deer) that is hidden slightly off the road half way up the 1 mile steep climb on the way in to work. Your standing trying to keep momentum breathing slightly below redline and you come upon the worst funk you can imagine and you have no choice but to inhale deeply multiple times.

I threw something(s) into my kitchen trash bin once, and all I knew was that a few days later the stench was unbearable. Had to let the bin soak for a few days in soap water.

Another would be what-ever the smell was that made Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs lose it on one show.