Note to self: never ever touch the bugzapper that's busy zapping a mosquito! Always remember that there's well over a 1000 volts on there regardless of its power rating. Anything over 50V can kill you!

.. if only my drunken fool self would realize that. Seriously though.. the kick of a bugzapper's shock, it's amazing! Just like drugs however, don't try it at home. Oh well. At least not me but yet another mosquito has bitten the duster. Serves those parasitic bitches right!!!

@RantSomeWhere Feels good, doesn't it? :3
It's not something that I'd call "to be repeated" because it's super deadly, but damn that shock.. reminds me of the first shock that I've ever received when I was 9 years old. Back then I shoved a fork down the AC lines :') given that I'm still alive, it's probably been a contact to just the live wire, with my body charging up accordingly (due to the human body's parasitic capacitance). But it felt so much like back then!!!

@RantSomeWhere hahaha, must've been quite the shock indeed! XD
Oh well.. glad you were able to find the rat again :)

@Condor

Dont touch van de graff generators then!!!
Some of them can get to 100 of thousands of volts!!!
Its going to instantly kill you!!1!

* Obligatory voltage dosent kill, its amperage comment *

So we are talking about getting shocked right? I might share my stories as well!

My first adventure happened when i was less than 10 y.o
I was playing with my friend in my house. The parents were in the other room. Because we had been bored i decided to make a "vaccum cleaner"
I took a old power cord (the one used to power old radios, shaped like a 8)
and i inserted the 8 side to a wet plastic bottle... After inserting the other side to a sockiet a huge spark was created. I blew every fuse in the house... (automatic ones).

The parents were horryfied 🤣, but nothing happened to us.

@Gregozor2121 The power rating of a Van de Graaff generator is quite low though... I'm pretty sure that its lethal voltage would leak away into my body instantly upon contact. And yeah it's the voltage that kills, not the amperage.. especially in high voltage sources that can deliver several watts of power.

The fuses may have been breakers though? At least in Western countries, fuse boxes are still called that.. but they're filled with resettable fuses called circuit breakers nowadays. The fuses are then held within many electrical appliances.. but not every one has them, even though they really should.. unfortunately it's not something that's enforced by law.

@Gregozor2121 Well it's fortunate for me that it isn't enforced I guess.. here I'm trying to diverge from CEE/7 anyway, and I don't have an insurance for my goods, because I frankly don't feel like I need such a thing. The current laws at least allow me to digress somewhat from the "certified" design that the "certified electricians" put forth for this building (despite my uncertified disapproval).

I'm so glad I'm not the only one doing stupid things.
As a kid I wanted to start an elevator without closing the door. There is something like a female plug on the elevator and a male plug on the door to close a circuit. I plugged in uninsulated metal into female part. That was shocking. Still get tingling when I remember that.

I once stuck a knife into a toaster while drunk(while it was on). The fuse blew up, but thankfully the knife had a plastic handle. I don't know what would have happened otherwise, but I'm definitely not doing it again 😅

1000 volts on bug zapper?!

I thought we humans could withstand its voltage though it can give a little pain.

I sleep with a bug zapper bat beside me because of the nasty mosquitoes. Fortunately, never have touched when they are live.

@HoloDreamer Bug zappers are powered by DC circuits, so they've only got a booster circuit. The high voltage component (the center conductor in the mesh) is a DC voltage of - in my case - around 1.2kV. A constant voltage that doesn't suffer from significant leakage is lethal. That's why touching voltage sources above 50V is always advised against. Directly touching a 50V line with wet hands (through e.g. a transformer) could be lethal, because the transformer will likely be able to deliver several kilowatts. This can be lethal. The little pain in the DC circuit is only because of the very limited power of the AAA cells, as well as the runaway charges at high voltages. Don't be fooled into thinking that just because I survived them, they aren't lethal - they very much are.

Obligatory ElectroBOOM video

https://youtu.be/XDf2nhfxVzg

"saying that amps don't kill is like saying its the bullet that kills not the person shooting"

He is now the xkcd of electronics for me.

there are battery powered fly swatters, it will probably not kill you but zap a bit, try that next time for the electric rush

@Condor it seems the bug zapper you are talking about is different than the one I imagined it to be.

The bug zapper I have looks like a tennis bat and it can be charged by plugging to the socket.

Never found them intimidating or dangerous.

Have you ever touched a charged capacitor? I was repairing a power supply for an old amp and touched the terminals of one of the biggest caps I've ever seen (it was around some millifarad) that I didn't let discharge properly. It wasn't fully charged otherwise I would have surely died, but damn it hurt! I felt a shock in my whole arm up to the shoulder and my hand started contracting so painfully. It lasted a whole second or two (at least it felt like so long) it was so scary and painful. I'm never touching a power supply anymore without proper precautions

@Hedgepig I was waiting for someone to mention ElectroBOOM, lol

@Condor well I guess I'm in good company then xD. When I was fairly young I wondered what would happen if you were to take a random bit of metal and shove its ends into the wall socket holes. Needless to say, that didn't end well, lel.

@michezio never directly touched one that large, but I've touched badly made Chinese power circuits without discharging the caps... yeah. Also blown up quite a few xD

@bigus-dickus oh crap I remember those toy guns! I'd totally kill you if I was your sister, those things hurt pretty bad XD

Ah, I was a lot more direct. Was playing cricket with a friend one day and when he asked for the bat I kinda just lobbed it at him, hitting him right in the head as he was running towards me. Poor guy almost lost consciousness and was dazed for hours, and let's just say that my parents weren't too happy about it either...

Electric fences for cattle can also be fun. Once one of my buddies pissed into a bush and didn't see the fence going through - it was energised. Woohoooo!

@BurnoutDV I already have one of those, as well as a 7-ish kV electric lighter that I've built earlier 😅

@HoloDreamer charging from a wall socket, sounds like an interesting feature actually! Doesn't sound like a bad thing to implement into my lighter as well (given that insurance wouldn't approve of course, yada yada)...

@michezio once I've touched a circuit that I thought was turned off but still had some capacitor charge in it 😛 and my response? Ouch, fuck those fucking pieces of shit!!! (Need to remember to discharge them first 😅)

It's not the volts that will kill you, 50 million volts won't kill you if the current is low enough

@seraphimsystems https://hackingvision.com/2018/06/...
Essentially your statement is true, as in e.g. a bugzapper will give a good jolt but its current capability is so low that it doesn't kill you, despite it being several kV. The reason for that is that exceeding current capability causes the voltage to collapse. For example, when you short a circuit, the voltage difference goes down to almost zero because of that. However, the non-lethal high voltage situations should be considered the exception rather than the rule. And even those can be dangerous if the voltage doesn't collapse quickly enough (due to e.g. a charged high voltage capacitor, or an inductor with a residual magnetic field). High voltage should be considered potentially lethal at all times. You only get one chance in life after all.

@Condor I think it's worth keeping in mind that it is the wattage that will kill you, 5 volts at 500 amps will terminate life just as well as 500v at 5 amps

But you are right, electricity and water do not mix, and we are mostly water

@seraphimsystems 5V 500A is not lethal. You can touch a 5V line that's conducting any amount of current no problem, because the current going through you will be trivial. In fact I often touch active lines with bare hands when they're under 50V, even when they're conducting several amps to an attached load. It doesn't even tickle. However, with wet hands I can clearly feel a bite when I'm touching 50V. That's because my internal resistance went down due to the introduction of liquids. Skin has a fairly good resistance at low voltage, but breaks down when it isn't bone dry or when high voltage is introduced. Not only that but due to the capacitive properties of the body, AC hurts at lower voltages (30V and up, although I haven't tested this myself yet). With DC, anything above 60V is potentially lethal. And most supplies at that voltage can deliver more than a few milliamps. I highly suggest that you read my linked article as well as the videos that I referred to in it. Also read about Ohm's Law and how current is caused in a circuit due to a voltage differential over a given resistance.

@Condor obviously the resistance of dry skin would collapse a 5v supply no matter, but you get impaled on something and 5v at 300ohms (will push a 16.7ma current... Just above the let go range) In the right place, ie near the heart that could cause death.

Rare case I know, but my point is to treat every circuit as live and deadly.

Good habit to live by.

That said I have worked on 240v single phase and three phase live because it was quicker, now 240v bites like a bastard...

@seraphimsystems even putting a 5V line straight onto your highly conductive tongue doesn't do any damage. I highly recommend that you learn Ohm's Law. It's not the wattage or the amperage of your power supply that kills. It's merely the voltage over a given resistance.

Also, a 5V supply that's worth its salt (e.g. USB line) will not collapse until its current capability is exceeded. Just like any other power supply actually. When a 5V line touches any kind of skin or tissue that isn't a straight up short-circuit, the voltage will most likely just stay at 5V.