What’s the worst thing you’ve ever smelled? Now think of something a hundred times worse. A smell so bad it makes you feel like throwing up, a smell that could almost make you faint.
Well, a scientist has invented it and she calls it “Stench Soup”.
According to the Los Angeles Times, since November 10, 2002, Pamela Dalton, has been an expert in smells at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, and she is responsible for the smelly concoction.
Dalton has been interested in studying bad odors, and how people respond to them, since she was in her teens.
An early project that Dalton worked on was a liquid called “Bathroom Malodor.” (A “malodor” is a bad smell.) According to the L.A. Times, it smells like poop mixed with rotten eggs with the odor of a rotting rodent thrown in for good measure. The liquid is used by companies that make bathroom cleaning products. The theory is if a cleaning product can clean up this stench, it can take on anything.
More recently, Dalton put together the sickening solution she calls “Stench Soup.” She combined the most intense elements of “Bathroom Malodor” with the smell of decomposing flesh and rotting mushrooms.
One whiff, and your mind goes blank, your eyes tear up and you start to gag.
The smell is so bad, the Department of Defense is interested in it. Why would the DoD care about bad smells? Well, they’re thinking of using it as a non-lethal weapon.
On many occasions, when the military is on a peacekeeping mission, soldiers may need to disperse a crowd without injuring anyone. The Pentagon is studying a variety of non-lethal methods of crowd control, such as laser beams and slippery sprays. Foul odors may be one of the best, and safest, ways to encourage angry people to leave an area or stop rioting.
The L.A. Times listed several examples of instances when the military has employed chemical odors as weapons in the past, including:
- During World War II, a revolting mixture called “Who, Me?” was packed into tubes. It was designed to be squirted at German soldiers.
- In the 1960s, a chemical smell called “Go Home” was created to dispers crowds.
In 1997, Dalton tested the smells she created on several different people from various countries who were recruited through newspaper ads. The reaction to the bad smells was strong and negative — just as Dalton had hoped. “We got cursed in a lot of different languages,” Dalton was quoted as saying.
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever smelled? Leave a reply and let us know!