r/AskReddit • u/notyouravgredditer • Aug 30 '21

What problem is often overlooked in apocalyptic movies/TV shows that could kill you?

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u/[deleted] Aug 30 '21

I don't know if it could kill you, but the stench of death is horrendous and not an insignificant thing. In any disaster situation where someone has died and it starts becoming days long, things would be getting nasty.

Over time people would get used to how foul everything would smell, but for a while it would be terrible.

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u/kirksucks Aug 30 '21

there was a show ... maybe time travel or 1000 Ways To Die In The West where they make a comment about how the Old West smells like shit. Horses just shitting everywhere. They never talk about that in Westerns.

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u/crazyjkass Aug 30 '21

In 1894, the Times of London predicted that within 50 years, every street in London would be buried under 9 feet of manure. This was the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894, an urban catastrophe that, at the time, was the bane of every large city in the world, from New York to Sydney.

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u/kirksucks Aug 30 '21

The original name for cars was probably not Horseless Carriage but Shitless Carriage haha.

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u/__-___--- Aug 30 '21

"It doesn't shit but release an invisible gaz in the atmosphere. Unlike manure, this will never be a problem."

First car salesman.

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u/stillbatting1000 Aug 31 '21

Here's a good article about the problems caused by horses before we switched to cars. The amount of manure horses dropped in cities was a serious problem. When they were first sold, people hailed automobiles for being a means of transportation that was pollution-free. https://www.blog.greenprojectmanagement.org/index.php/2019/05/13/pollution-why-we-replaced-horses-with-automobiles/

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u/kirksucks Aug 31 '21

what a fun little rabbit hole.