Talk:Chimerical/@comment-1671931-20150908165646/@comment-1671931-20150908220536

The problem with what you wrote, is the following statement: "It distinctly smells like piss (which contains ammonia) and is often misidentified as urine." Urea does degrades to ammonia and biuret when heated but this isn't mentioned in the statement, it doesn't talk about heating. And still, you smell ammonia, not urine...

The smell of ammonia can be explained with the built up of animal waste (especially with cats, based on the smell, cat urine contains more NH3 that with humans) but you are exaggerating things and forget to take in account, the smell of feces and decay. The animals can be a source, but as you described the smell, it can't be the only source. (To be able to smell so well, that it is overpowering, on the hallway... In college, we work often with ammonia and it does happen that a bottle with ammonia isn't closed, filling the room with its fumes but to smell it one the hallway, let alone so strongly, Then we are talking about very high concentrations, industrial concentrationsl). A hint of ammonia would have been better as it is still very recognizable, and getting stronger if you get closer and closer to room 311. It would be more realistic, and wouldn't have kill them if anything happened to their breathers. One way the smell could be explained better, was if she committed suicide, by drinking ammonia cleaning product. The bottle would empty on her when she dropped it, spreading the smell better on the sheets. That combined with the smell of urine, would make it quite strong ( I have never tried ammonia on cloth, but acetic acid is another strong smelling product, and if you clean it up with towel, throw away the towel or you will smell vinegar for days. I learned that the hard way)

But still, these are small problems I found in the story (likely due to my background in chemistry), I was wondering if I might had missed something. Cause, other than this, the story is really great.