Foulest, most putrescent smell I’ve ever smelled was the green cloud wafting from the entrance to a public latrine in Beijing. When I walked by, it grabbed me by the throat. I doubled over and ran. I can still remember the exact smell. I cannot describe it.
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I feel the need to mention the winter African hoofed animal barn here. I don’t know if it was the zebras or the giraffes, but I had to breathe through my mouth and shallowly at that, and I’m still tasting that smell days and many showers later.
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Once I opened a chest freezer I had been offered as “free to take if cleaned it out”. Free stuff!
Upon opening it I saw many gallon-sized mason jars, with whitish mystery-substance inside. As I went to lift the first two jars out, they burst open and others burst as well in a cascade reaction. It was like a Mason jar version of the nursery scene at the end of ‘Aliens’. Inside the jars had been stewed meat and fish.
A friend walked out to the garage to check on me just at the moment the jars burst, saw the horror on my face and we both began involuntarily vomiting. The stench was otherworldly, something like having the chum from the bottom of a fishing boat frapped together with the fermented effluent from an abattoir poured directly up your nostrils with a funnel.
Naturally, the freezer was broken.
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Same thing happened to us. That smell hit us at the front door. I half expected to see a dead body somehow in our flat. We couldn’t get rid of the stink from the freezer either even after extensive washing.
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I still have a couple of stink bombs. Pretty sure they are illegal now.
Maybe ozone would do the job? I’ve used DIY ozone generator to remove bad smell from vacuum cleaner and it worked really well. Of course it needs to be done outside, because ozone is extremely harmful.
I had a boss once who had a chronic stomach illness. His breath smelled like what I would imagine the cold breath of death to smell. Poor bastard.
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that things i won’t work with series is like pron for chemists
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Google is inconclusive on the point. Seems to be illegal in some places, anyway. Should be illegal everywhere!
Years ago, I was near ground zero when some idiot set a handful off in the high school cafeteria by smashing them on a tabletop with an empty plastic tray. IMO, they should be considered some kind of assault by themselves. The resulting panic did cause a few minor injuries from falling and flailing elbows as 100+ teenagers sprinted for the exits. If memory serves, the perpetrator was arrested, but ultimately was just suspended for a couple days.
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U.S. Government Standard Bathroom might be a euphemism for certain areas in subway stations. God knows I almost passed out a few times trying to hold my breath while speed walking through the worst spots, especially…
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@74hc595
Rocket fuel scientist John D. Clark in his book “Ignition” …
Oh my goodness, how did I not know about this book? So much for a day’s productivity, this book has had me in stitches 
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Even for non-chemists like me it’s a hoot. I sometimes wonder how, in particular, Dr. Klapötke’s lab in Munich hasn’t been leveled multiple times by now.
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butyric acid has to be up there:
One drop in the ventilation system of a large building and everyone’s puking.
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Not sure whether this was hidden because correcting the spelling is considered off-topic, or because someone thought I was saying that Mr. Munroe was the worst smell. I definitely didn’t mean that. If it was the first thing, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
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