Olfactory triggered memories/emotions are some of the strongest out there... neurologically speaking, not just PTSD. To the point that in school one of the things we learned is that the divorce rate jumps every time they discontinue a perfume/cologne, the same way the birth rate jumps when there’s a power outtage! (Word to the wise? Buy in bulk whatever you & your beloved wore when you fell in love, no matter how awful, and break them out from time to time).
That said? Cha. Tons of them.
One of the quirkiest is a combination scent of cheap industrial carpet, coffee, & simple green. Fine individually, add them together? <low whistle> It’s a smell that so permeates military buildings that it lingers for years after they close a base and the building has been completely repurposed. Interestingly enough, add cigar smoke? It becomes a wash of happy memories, instead. But if it’s a newer building that doesn’t have decades worth of smoke painted into its walls, and soaked into the pores of the brick and concrete, I lose my ever lovin mind right quick.
JP5 (a specific kind of fuel) is another. <chuckling> There’s actually a limited run cologne I bought from bvlgari -that I wear once or twice a year- that smells like hot asphalt, burnt rubber, and jet fuel. I loooooove it. But I only get in the mood to smell like tarmac on a blue moon.
A few others I’ve walked into face first? Cordite, White phos, blood & shit, burn piles that have both rubbish and whole bodies in them (bbq never bothers me, but we don’t bbq skin, hair, guts, shit, vomit, and brains), a certain kind of warmly scented humidity in the dark, Sunflowers & CK1, new playing cards, the rotting stench of harbours and swamps, roadkill / a certain level of decay/decomp, the scent of certain skin infections, o2 tanks & plastic, abandoned water logged houses, freshly turned earth of certain types, Niagara spray starch, hot metal & piss, freshly washed crystal, the acrid smell of fear, the pong of too many unwashed bodies in too small a space for too long of a time, wet metal, opium cooking, single use sterile packaging air, used fart sacks (I tried to buy the 3 layer sleeping bags from a surplus store, because they’re well over a grand new, only a couple hundred used.. and lost a week. I remember walking into the shop, flipping through the row of them, fine fine fine, & then nada)... shrug. Tip of the iceberg, all of these.
