Electrical shock survivors

Closest I've been to actually being struck by lightning.... I went to see a friend in Virginia and we took a road trip down to the Outer Banks. We stopped at Kitty Hawk, NC to see the Wright Brothers Memorial. It's on the the top of what's called, I shit you not, Kill Devil Hill, and we saw a storm coming from a little way off and we decided to walk down to see the landing spot marker before it got any closer. Out in the open field about half way, boom, everything went white and we both went limp and dropped like a rock. Everything in the air felt like it was sizzling. We were in disbelief for a couple of minutes but agreed it must have hit a hundred feet away or so and we were shaken but totally fine. One of the many stupidest things I've ever done and the most power I've ever been close to by far

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bean said:
I took a brief 120v jolt at around 8yo (plugging in faulty Xmas lights). I touched an electrical fence on a dare at around 13. Might explain some things about me.
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Neighbors with horses where I grew up had an electric fence. Lots of entertainment. Part of the excitement of the dare was the fence was switched off a lot of the time so you never knew if you were gonna get bit.
 
this one's embarrassing
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when i was like 15, my bedroom was downstairs and it had one of these pull down cord switches for the ceiling light.
the switch operated with this rocker thing inside.
it wasn't heaps reliable, the rocker would sometimes get stuck and not switch between the terminals properly.

so one day i got fed up and took the cover off to have a look. (didn't tell my dad, left the power on etc.)
with my hand i moved the rocker to see if it was getting stuck on something, gave it a wiggle, and got it working again.

sure enough, it got stuck again and i did the same thing, except im a dummy and shocked myself on the exposed mains terminals under the cover (230V AC).
felt a jolt down my arm and everything on that side of my upper body contract. heart was racing. tingles. mild pain. wasn't too bad overall.

but of course, i didn't learn anything. zapped myself again doing the exact same thing. after that second time, i just left it alone lol.
 
I was having a visit with a very old and venerable amplifier technician to have my 60's Traynor tube amps serviced. He had a lifelong library collection of electronic books and manuals on a shelf.

The one that caught my eye was the 'Sunn((0)))' technician holy bible (Sorry I forget the title now)

Browsing through the introduction page.

The author had humbly dedicated the book to his friends wife, who's last words were:

'Could you please pass me a fork, my toast is stuck in the toaster'
 
been hit with 7.2k and 14.4K a few times in utility line clearance tree work ... the only amp to shock me was a valve junior I got in a hurry with while modding, it just put burn marks on my thumb from where it touched the solder pads. got loads of stories of the less fortunate though ...
 
I got zapped by a tennis racket shaped battery powered bug zapper somehow, the kind that converts 9v dc into some AC thing that kills bugs on contact. I was picking up some metal stuff that was on top of it and in and around the "net" with both hands and felt the electricity go across my heart. I couldn't move my hands for a second and my heart hurt afterward for an hour or so. It was weird, and I felt stupid.
 
Electric fence as a kid...more than I care to admit. As tech director in high school I had 240v go from one hand to the other and knock me on my ass up in the catwalk. My guardian angel was workin overtime on that one. Since then only the occasional 120v when doing something silly like a light switch or outlet rewire and not turning the breaker off for "operation" like motivation.
 
Ah yes, the electric fence! Lived equaly rural... As kids there was always the dare to pee against it, but to my knowledge none us kids ever did so. With pee not being a continuous stream, I suppose it takes actual effort to get it... "Right".

I assume it would feel like a punch, same as when holding the wire and get these spasms in the upper arm as if an older brother is bullying yiu.
 
I think mythbusters did the wee onto the electric fence… maybe they busted that one? Man I haven't watched that show in ages.

Now I'm thinking more, I recall getting a jolt off an old metal housed lamp that was quite painful, it started after I discharged a static buildup, but it must've brought a little something extra from the wall socket, because it ran all the way up my arm to my shoulder. Hated that lamp every since. I'm glad it's on the scrap heap.
 
My father built a go-kart, more or less, when I was a child. I drove it to a wheat field once and somehow stuck my hand at the engine, getting a shock in the process that I think made my arm go numb for a bit.
jessenator said:
I think mythbusters did the wee onto the electric fence… maybe they busted that one? Man I haven't watched that show in ages.

Now I'm thinking more, I recall getting a jolt off an old metal housed lamp that was quite painful, it started after I discharged a static buildup, but it must've brought a little something extra from the wall socket, because it ran all the way up my arm to my shoulder. Hated that lamp every since. I'm glad it's on the scrap heap.
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Apparently they re-did it, and it is possible - but you need a steady stream so might need to be really close to the fence.
 
Working on my old Laney VH100r way back when was the first and only time I got a serious jolt. No idea how much voltage, but I had one arm behind my back at least so I lived 😂

Then I learned about discharging caps et al…
 
I've had the usual zaps from 110v, unplugging something or whatever. Vacuumed a friend's place in Wales and learned unplugging that beastly plug why it's so much larger than N.Maerkin plugs, it needs to be able to handle the 220v that gave me good enough zap to teach respect.

Been zapped by tennis-racket Bug-Zappers numerous times and they are no big deal, or so I though until I read Falco_Femoralis' post.


Been lucky and careful in theatre endeavours, and I've only built a couple of amps and am terrified of killing myself with one, so no zaps there either.

No serious zaps, ever. Yet. *touch wood*


 
Feral Feline said:
I've had the usual zaps from 110v, unplugging something or whatever. Vacuumed a friend's place in Wales and learned unplugging that beastly plug why it's so much larger than N.Maerkin plugs, it needs to be able to handle the 220v that gave me good enough zap to teach respect.

Been zapped by tennis-racket Bug-Zappers numerous times and they are no big deal, or so I though until I read Falco_Femoralis' post.


Been lucky and careful in theatre endeavours, and I've only built a couple of amps and am terrified of killing myself with one, so no zaps there either.

No serious zaps, ever. Yet. *touch wood*


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Suicide by amplifier... :unsure:
 
Fama said:
My father built a go-kart, more or less, when I was a child. I drove it to a wheat field once and somehow stuck my hand at the engine, getting a shock in the process that I think made my arm go numb for a bit.
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When I was a kid we had a lawnmower with no ignition system. To turn it off you had to physically disconnect the spark plug, which my grandfather taught me how to do with my bare hands. All summer I got zapped by that machine. My mom caught me one day and let me in on the secret. There was an insulated tool my grandfather had made, and that he was an asshole.
 
Cybercow said:
…he was checking for live voltages by stretching the fingers of one hand across the connections. Amazed I asked him why he wasn't getting thrown to the ground when doing so. He said he has a very high skin resistance…
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He was just using the original DMM: Delusional Macho Meter ;)
The only smart thing he was doing there was only using one hand, so he didn’t have to find out if he also had “very high resistance” heart muscle 🙄

I’ve worked as an electrician for the last 10+ years, and no one-the-job shocks yet. 🤞
I think it’s mainly down to being really deliberate and methodical. No-one’s ever congratulated me on how quickly I got something done, but my shit always works and nobody gets hurt 🤷‍♀️

Years ago (2006-ish?) a building I lived in Boston got struck by lightning. 5th floor caught fire (we lived on the 2nd), fortunately there was a fire station about 2 blocks away. They put it out fairly quickly. But I definitely remember the feeling of standing in the rain, yowling cat in cat carrier, watching my building burn.
They wouldn’t let us back in until the next day. The DSL modem in my old Dell PC was fried, but no other damage to our place.
 
I've definitely been zapped a few times, the biggest being when troubleshooting a DIY tube amp years back. Few hundred volts at that part of the circuit, but low current, thankfully
 
When I worked out on the hydropower dams on the Columbia River we had a mandatory safety class every year at the beginning of the fish monitoring season. The teacher was crazy hot and it was not that easy to concentrate by the third or fourth time around, but the message was no joke. The least powerful transmission lines directly overhead at Bonneville Dam were 115kV, IIRC some of the other dams were like double that. On average about one rigger a year died at one dam or another while I was on that job, but not all from electrocution. Dirty power was a huge hassle with our super sensitive monitoring equipment and a big part of my gig was dealing with that. Sometimes we even had to resort to using a small Honda generator when wall power got too nasty. Most of the work I did was relatively safe but you could never really relax when you were working around the turbine intakes or the huge cranes, which we did a lot of.

I've welded a screwdriver to a Fender Twin chassis, and taken my share of ~500VDC hits over the years. Its gets old real fast!
 
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