The smell hasn’t ever affected my life. It was noticeable, but not really scarring. I always avoided looking at the burned bodies, because it wasn’t my job to pull them out. The visual was pretty bad.

I think my first (and worst) was when we had to wait about six hours for the medical examiners to come and get the body. The scent permeated everything, to the point where the much more experienced fella I was working with advised to take off my clothes in my garage/outside the house and rinse them there, and only later bring them directly to the washing machine and add boiling water to the tub as it filled so the water would be even hotter than just from the water heater.

After we had been there for six hours, we went to eat (it was night shift and about midnight, so we hadn’t eaten anything for probably 18+ hours) at a burger joint. I get my sandwich, tilt my head down to take a bite, and that compressed my uniform shirt. Well… that air inside the shirt was completely from the dead person air, and I got a face full of it. Had to blow the air away for a second before I could take that bite again. I do remember the sandwich being delicious.

I don’t think any of my family knows when I find/see/examine dead bodies. They don’t need to hear about it, and I eat when I’m hungry; no meal changes required. I probably wouldn’t sneak a piece of raw sausage as it’s ground after seeing brain matter, but I don’t usually eat raw meat anyway.

My firefighter days were long ago and short numbered but I am a paramedic.

Truth to be told: I have PTBS from the smell of burning human meat. I had two cases that cemented that in my brain - both were not people burning to crisp but instead people who were still moving* - but beyond rescue. In that state human meat smells different from other meats and it is… something you don’t want to smell ever.

(*: Even most severely burnt people, with 99% grade 3 burns are awake for quite a while. They are beyond resuce,though. Please people, don’t try to kill yourself with fire. And if you do, don’t do it in front of people. Really don’t. You fuck them up for life)

I still cannot stand if my wife cleans the oven for example.

If you’re worried about how smells affect you, have you ever smelt where a person died? It smells almost exactly like a bunch of very very rotten food. But your mind freaks out about it knowing it comes from a person. I used to work on insurance jobs and have cleaned up after 3 deaths and the smell… it just fucking sticks in your mind knowing what it is. Once a car was brought into the warehouse after a suicide but i didnt know what for it just smelt like a fridge of food after not having power for a month. But as soon as i learned what it was my brain instantly made it smell worse. Honestly kinda crazy.

Some are affected significantly by it. I would say that in my experience, most aren’t. Most would work a messy suicide with open cranial trauma and then go eat a big plate of spaghetti after turning the scene over to the coroner.

Dead human flesh smells like most raw meat does. Pork isn’t any more similar than beef as far as the aroma is concerned. Rotting human flesh smells pretty similar to most other rotting meats. A lot of times, it smells worse because most people’s experience with rotting meat is a few ounces, maybe a few pounds, that they left in their refrigerator or something of that nature. 200 pounds of it marinating inside a dank bathroom with poor ventilation, exposed subflooring, and a space heater that’s been running for two weeks is gonna smell a lot worse.

But everyone’s different and has their things. I know a guy who can handle everything except when someone vomits. He will spew every time without question. Some people can’t handle feces well. Some people can’t handle mucus plugs from a tracheostomy tube that hasn’t been suctioned in far too long. Some people can’t handle bile mixed with chicken noodle soup that fountains out of a cardiac arrest on the first chest compression. Some people really do perceive burning human flesh as having its own distinct and repulsive smell. A lot of people would say that, actually. To me, it just smelled like burnt meat.

The rotting flesh or dead flesh itself is unfortunately far from the nastiest thing you encounter, usually.