Reader-added tags include "Damage from harmful rumors(?)", "Pigs, of course…", and "It's not us, Kogasa-san".

The survey raises a point of odor:

Which stinks?
• A house-cloth left as-is after cleaning up milk
• Shoes worn continually for several years
• Ammonia
• Surströmming
• Yukarin's sock##DELETED##

When it comes to the survey... my sense of smell is nearly dead, I can't smell 3 of 5 options, old shoes, ammoina, and a house-cloth left as is, I've never heard of Surströmming, and Yukarin's sock was removed as an option lol.

bloodrage92 said:
I've never heard of Surströmming

I saw it on TV once. It's decaying canned fish, with just enough salt in it to prevent it from rotting completely. The vomit inducing stench when you open the can is weapon grade.

At some point Ashens (a British YouTuber that "reviews" silly cheap things) mentioned someone he knew had a bit of the juice from a leaky Surströmming can hit his carpet and thus had to have it replaced. The issue is that gasses build up in the cans since, yanno, it's essentially rotting.

Well, fermentation basically IS a sort of rotting. That said, surstromming is apparently eaten outdoors as a matter of course. I guess even the Swedes (who developed the stuff) don't want to be around the concentrated gasses for long.

Although...I wonder which is considered more of a stinkpot--surstromming, or kusaya.

Yep. Whenever flesh rots you produce cadaverine and the very appropriately named putrescine. Which people will react to at low concentrations (and are toxic at much higher).

Skyknight said:
Although...I wonder which is considered more of a stinkpot--surstromming, or kusaya.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surstr%C3%B6mming

Surstromming wins out, apparently. Also, the Kusaya article doesn't list anything regarding airline bans or evictions. The Surstromming article lists both.

I haven't actually been to a pig farm, despite living in a state with more pigs than people. I have been to a dairy farm though, and I can't imagine pigs smelling much better.

As a former chemistry student, I was once forced to work in a laboratory handling lots of chemicals. Out of the lot, I once had to handle pure concentrated ammonia in perhaps a huge molar quantity for 3 days straight 8 hours a day (not just ammonia, but I used it quite often). Let me tell you, I had to wear a mask because I tried the first day without one, and I ended up almost vomitting from the intense smell I had and it stuck to my skin for a whole month, before I felt clean from ammonia (2 months for the smell to completely leave my nose, everything tasted of high grade ammonia).

For more fun with hideously smelly (and/or explosive, corrosive, poisonous, etc.) substances, see Derek Lowe's Things I Won't Work With.

Edit: Sand Won't Save You This Time is far and away the best known of these posts.

279okshap said:

For more fun with hideously smelly (and/or explosive, corrosive, poisonous, etc.) substances, see Derek Lowe's Things I Won't Work With.

Edit: Sand Won't Save You This Time is far and away the best known of these posts.

I especially liked the trithioacetone article because it reminds me of fMRI research into associative memories between images and scents, and any emotional effects that carry from odor to image, that used diluted trithioacetone as one of the odors.

Which stinks?
• A house-cloth left as-is after cleaning up milk
• Shoes worn continually for several years
• Ammonia
• Surströmming
• Yukarin's sock##DELETED##

Over a decade later, ZUN confirmed.