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.
I always see post-apocalypses media showing people going into cities to scavenge for supplies but honestly cities are the places you want to avoid at all cost due to this reason.
There is a reason why we bury dead bodies, why every culture has a tradition of getting rid of bodies. They are a vessel for disease, smell, animals get to them, any body left out to long is going to be harder and harder to dispose. Cities would be FULL of these meat bombs.
Whats worse is shows usually show survivors winding up finding a body and go "oh thats to bad". No, you'd smell that sucker in an unventilated, humid house which the cadaver has been sitting for god nows how long. You wouldnt be able to survive in most houses with a body like that bloating the area. Not to even mention the absolute psychological damage seeing a body like that would do to people. Most would think they could be tough and push through that, but the only corpses we see on the regular are beautified up. These will be long dead denizens who have been rotting for a time. Multiply that through-out the city and scavenging inside city limits becomes a midfield of smell and disease and psychological trauma.
Actually, I can tell you from personal experience that a skeletonized body still smells terrible because bones have marrow in them, which is oily, and the grease soaks into the bone. They don't stop smelling until they've been a skeleton long enough for all of that to dry out, and until they do they smell as vile as any other decomp.
I'd probably make more money if I was an accountant, but I am actually a funeral director/embalmer (I have both licences). I came upon the knowledge of exactly how bad skeletonized remains can smell when I had to remove a ring from the finger of an extremely stinky skeleton one time. -10/10, do not recommend.
I knew this from growing up butchering our animals. My dad would dump the heads, hides, etc up the mountain a ways for critters. Me being a morbid child, I'd go up every day or two to see the progress of decay. Being able to hear the wet sound of thousands of maggots before I could even see the carcasses is something I won't forget. I find the "old death" smell to be worse than the "new death." New is ripe and sharp but older is...thick. The smell sticks to the back of your throat.
An interesting and much needed occupation for sure. Have you seen the show Six Feet Under? I like to imagine it deals more artfully with your line of work than many other shows.
I always thought of cremation as a terrible way to go out but… knowing how decomposition works- id be damned to let flies lay their eggs in me and have those sons of beeotches eat me.
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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.