A little bit of a disclaimer here, I'm slightly intoxicated so the details may be a tad fuzzy.

For a little backstory, the crew's mess on a submarine is where everything happens. Training, general announcements, entertainment, etc. Now this area is directly next to the galley, where the food is made, dishes are washed, drinks are prepared, you get the idea. The door to the galley is usually closed whenever something is going on on crew's mess, or they're doing something loud in there.

Now on a submarine, we usually keep things as contained as we can. All gray and black water, even the water and waste from the galley, goes into sanitary tanks. Every once in a while, the tank(s) get too full, and we have to blow them overboard with pressurized air. Since we have two of them, one is always "on service" and one is always "off service" i.e. everything goes into one tank while the other one prepares to be blown overboard with compressed air.

So no shit there I was, right after watch and after chow, underway who knows where, our watch rotation was receiving training on something probably completely irrelevant but very important to the officers. They were in the middle of their important speech about this subject or another. All of a sudden, we hear running water, so we all think that the cooks are just washing dishes. Oh, no, my friend.

This stench hit us out of nowhere. I've never smelled a dead body before, that smell might be worse, but oh good lord, it was like you had stuck your head inside of a septic tank and took a very deep breath through your nose. Immediately one of the chiefs/officers keyed the 4MC (our emergency circuit), "SECURE BLOWING SANS!"

Immediately the flow of water stopped. Everyone is still on crew's mess wondering wtf is going on.

Then, the door separating the galley and the crew's mess opens.

On the doorstep stands SN Brioche (named after the bread because I'm not outing his actual name) covered head to toe in this black goop. Turns out he was in the galley cleaning up, when A-gang (the guys who are responsible for the sanitary tanks) fucked up the valve line-up for blowing said tanks overboard. Well, instead of blowing them overboard, everything was blown inboard, out of every single drain on the boat.

Galley, showers, toilets, drain funnels, this shit (literally) went everywhere, in all compartments of the boat. Then, as everyone on crew's mess is still wondering what the hell is going on, this door opens right next to us, and this horrified seaman tries to get out of the galley. Unfortunately, his chief happened to be attending the aforementioned briefing/training, and notices the galley door open.

"YOU STEP ONE GODDAMN FOOT ONTO MY CREW'S MESS WHILE YOU'RE COVERED IN SHIT AND I WILL FUCKING END YOU!" Door closes, Seaman goes back inside the galley, still covered in human excrement.

And on to the cleanup. The ELTs (the guys who cover the chemical analysis of the reactor, secondary systems, running the control points so to prevent the spread of contaminants) were super excited, because they actually had a use now. They set up control points at every access point leading to or from the main passageways, making sure that all contaminants (usually radioactive, but now microbial) stayed in the controlled area. Good for them.

However, Captain Split-the-baby-in-half (again, not using real names), decided that because we were still "on mission" (training for future missions), we would not surface to ventilate the air nor pull into port to get everything cleaned up.

We used every kimwipe on board, we legit ran out of them, all of the shopvacs, spent 3 days trying to get his absolute mess cleaned up. All while being underwater with no outside air replenishment. 3 or 4 sailors got seriously sick and got restricted to their racks. All this shit was in every nook and cranny you could imagine, it was fucking awful.

And nothing came from any of it