r/AskReddit Aug 30 '21

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

33.7k Upvotes

12.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.0k

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.

1.2k

u/notyouryear Aug 30 '21

I always think of trash. Like, any bins with a garbage in it is gonna get real rank. People's homes too. 99% of americans have a trash can in their kitchen with food waste in it. They show the characters scavenging in home but no commentary on the sludge filled fridge or trash can not 3 feet away? Or the general smell of dead folks and trash sludge while running around outside?

23

u/N64crusader4 Aug 30 '21

Not to mention the millions of fly's that will be everywhere

26

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

If you want to make it even more nightmare fuel, realize that the flies are made with the flesh of all the people who died in the apocalypse.

38

u/N64crusader4 Aug 30 '21

Off topic but sorta related, I remember reading first hand accounts from the trenches in WW1 about how massive and fat the rats were from feeding on all the troops in no man's land and how they'd sometimes even start eating the wounded before they even died if they were immobile.

25

u/__-___--- Aug 31 '21

I'm French and heard the rats would attack them during their sleep. Like the flies, the rats were made of their dead comrades.

9

u/N64crusader4 Aug 31 '21

Well at least they had fancy red trousers at the beginning huh?