Have you ever been electrocuted?

In My Humble Opinion
21

My worst bite was from a TV picture tube second anode socket. For the curious, it looks like a suction cup attached to a heavy gauge wire (usually red) on one of the tapered sides of a cathode ray tube. Even in TV sets (and computer monitors) that haven’t been plugged in for years, a charge exceeding 15kV may be present.

I thought I’d heard the arc pass from the anode connection to my grounded screwdriver, making the connection safe to undo, thought being the operant word. Knocked my ass right off of the work bench stool. Mr. Arm felt numb and hurty for a few days. I learned not to annoy the trons sleeping in yonder hole. :wink:

22

I was on board a ship which sailed up the Loire to Nantes in France and it was my job when we came alongside to connect up the ship/shore phone lines.

The main problem with this is that the lines often get chopped and broken, so its usual to try find something to run them through something like a culvert, or over something out of reach like a crane.

The cranes were not going to be working over the weekend of our visit so I climbed up the crane ladder dragging the shipside cable with me, then I went down and dragged the shore side cable up to the same place and tied them together before I fitted the connector block.

Now picture the scene, a young man of around 19 years old, halfway up a crane, watching all his mates some 50 feet below him, all going ashore for a few drinkies.

I was eager to get that job done, I can tell you, so I got my screwdriver out and connector block, and found I hadn’t got anything capable of stripping the insulation from the wire, it was a fairly precarious position anyway as I had to keep holding on with one arm and was leaning backwards a bit.

I looked down at the ship, and I wasn’t inclined to clamber all the way down, back on board, back into my work section, unlock it all, dig out some snips and then lock up and return to the crane as valuable drinking time was passing.

Well, my reasoning went like this, since the phones were not connected, no-one would be making any calls anyway so it would be ok to strip the insulation using the good old electricians standby, my teeth.

My reasoning was faulty someone did try to make a call, 50V dc isn’t all that much, except when it rattles your jawbone whilst you are trying to hang on for dear life 40 or 50 feet above the ground.

They gave up after a a number of ring tones and I should have taken the wire out of my mouth, except I was still getting over it, when they called again.
Its not easy to pull a wire from your mouth with one hand whilst your jaws are clamping down tight, and youre trying your very best not to fall to your death.

After that I climbed all the way back down and got the proper tools.

23

I once stupidly placed my palm across all 3 phases in a 450V controller box. Got knocked back about 4 feet.

I would have gone farther, but a large boiler stopped me. Ouch.

24

I have grabbed an exposed electric cord with live 110 while standing in a foot of water (don’t ask). Anyway, I didn’t get knocked anywhere. I just stood there and felt my entire body vibrate, but I couldn’t let go. Weirdest feeling ever. A friend hit with with a wooden table, which broke the table, and also the connection. I was pretty shaken up after that, but seem to have suffered no ill effects (i.e. death). Question though: If there hadn’t been anyone around to help, would I have died eventually? Of would I have just stood there vibrating until I managed to scrape myself against something?

25

Inside your fuse box is a cartridge that holds the fuses for your oven. If you take this out, you’ll see a flat, metal rod going down the back of the box. Never, ever accidentally touch this bar. No, really, I mean it.

26

When my wife and I moved into our first house, we had a small Wall oven that did not work. So I opened up the controls to work on it. I went to get some tools and my pretty bride chooses that time to peek in to see what was going on. She touch the contacts of one of the controls to the metal frame of the oven and
**BZaapP! **
Circuit break blown, thankfully my wife is ok except for being pissed at me for not have the power off.
I made it worse by telling her, she should always assume something is powered up unless she secured and tested it herself.
{Not the smartest time for a very good safety tip}

Jim {Oh, I had the Oven working about an hour later}

27

Washing the family dinner dishes one night when I was a kid, I stacked a large aluminum tray against the toaster. Unfortunately said toaster must have had a short. Also, unfortunately my other hand happened to be in the dishpan full of soapy water. It felt like somebody had rammed their very hard index fingers into my arm pits. Luckily, both arms went right up into the air and the connection was broken.

28

I have had some electric fence treatment, yes. For those not familiar, an electric fence is a wire running around the perimiter of a field, hooked to the mains or a powerful battery. If an animal touches it, he gets a “Jag”, and not a cool car, I dont mean ;j .

I’ve been duped plenty of times, as in, “Hey g, go unhook that fence over there, its not live”. BZZZZZP. Bastards.

i’ve heard horror stories about guys peeing on fences accidentaly, although these are always urban legend " I know a guy who knows a guy" stories.

29

My job is a functional test technician at Boeing. I work on live airplanes. I get zapped a couple times a year. The only difference is I work with 400 cycle electricity, not 60 cycle household. I have a couple of gold chain bracelets and rings in my jewelry box that have been damaged from some of the zaps.

My worst shock was from an FM transmitter I was working on while I was in the Navy. Got too close to a large capacitor and WHAM, I was on the floor with little birdies floating around my head. Then my co-worker, thinking I had killed myself, hit me in the chest in an attempt to start my heart. My injuries were a nasty burn on my left hand where my cheapo wedding band was, a minor concussion from hitting the wall behind me and 2 cracked ribs from my co-worker’s misguided attempt to save my life.

30

My ex-housemate, a railway signal linesman, hammered that into my head when he first started working on the signals…

My worst shock was pretty mild. The light in the fridge was out one day, and unbeknownst to me, my mother had taken it out of the socket. So when it didn’t come on, for some reason I got it into my head to touch the bulb to see what was going on. Except the bulb wasn’t there, and I stuck my finger in the socket. It didn’t hurt, but it did feel like I’d been punched in the chest, and I felt winded for a little while. Not pleasant.

31

I remember somewhere in the far corners of my childhood my first experience with electricity involving knitting needles and a socket. I guess that is why I never learned knitting in school :smack:

32

I’ve been zapped by 230V on several occassions, but the most memorable one was when I was trying to replace a 15A double-pole switch that our boiler was plugged into. Yes, I turned off the mains, yes, I removed the fuses, yes, I tested each contact before getting anywhere - but what I hadn’t realised is that in that house, there was one (and only one) heavy circuit which had a trip switch in a totally different place from all the others. Guess which circuit I was working on? One set of contacts (the one that I checked) were safely off, and the other set was live. I brushed against that, and got thrown back halfway across the room. Left me with a tingling in my arm for about half a day, but no ill effects beyond that. I must have been about 14, and I approached every electrical job with extreme caution after that.

33

I grew up in a TV repair shop, and have been zapped more times than I care to count. I’ve even come close to be electrocuted, but it’s not much of a story. Instead, I’ve got one to rival “Why Paddy’s Not at Work Today”.

I was about 12 when it happened, which was longer ago than I care to contemplate. I was perched behind a disassembled TV, with my feet hooked through the legs of my stool. I was sipping a Coke–the bottle was glass, which should offer a clue as to how long ago this was–and working on a crossword puzzle. I had been hunched over the puzzle for some time, so when I finished it, I indulged in a nice stretch…which proved to be a mistake.

The TV in front of me consisted largely of a heavy copper chassis with various components mounted on it (another clue to the date, for those familiar with electronics history). One of these components was a widget called a “tripler”–its purpose was to step up the voltage to sufficient kilovolts to drive the CRT (picture tube). As I stretched, the pencil in my right hand got a bit too close to the tripler contacts, while my left hand strayed into the vicinity of the grounded chassis.

(Quickie electronics lesson: Graphite is conductive. While it’s not a good conductor, it’s perfectly capable of carrying current from a high voltage source down the length of a pencil and into a little boy’s hand. From there, of course, the juice will zip merrily up the boy’s arm, across his chest, and down his other arm to arc back to the chassis.)

The result was rather spectacular. I spasmed backwards, knocking my drink off the bench and tipping my stool over backwards. The bottle won the race to the concrete floor. I followed close behind with one foot still twisted in the stool, landing among the shards of glass and slamming the back of my head against the floor. One of the resulting cuts required stitches, so I was hauled off to the family doctor.

On examining me, the doctor noted that I had a mild concussion, numerous small lacerations in addition to the stitch-worthy cut, a small but nasty burn on each hand, and a sprained ankle. Naturally, he asked what I had been up to that had led to so many different injuries at once.

And I had to answer, “Doing a crossword puzzle.”

34

It was covered way up toward the top of the thread, but I was really wondering if the dead were posting on the SMDB.

35

I haven’t been, but I was seriously injured due to an electrocution. In 1988 (June to be precise) I visited my sister in Gulf Shores where, not uncommon for a beach, there was a huge storm while I was there. At the time my sister had some horses- Pokey, a 20-something gelding and the equine equivalent of an ugly mutt, but super gentle and hence his name, and my sister’s beloved Honey Sue, a Walkaloosa (half TN Walking Horse/half Appaloosa) mare. She kept them boarded at a farm a few miles from her house. After the storm she got a call from the family who boarded them that the storm had blown parts of the fence down and the horses were out.

We went to find them. I was never passionate about it and I never competed or anything, but I’d ridden horses since I was a kid and Pokey was the first one I ever rode, and both horses were gentle. We found them in a pecan grove on an adjoining piece of land, saddled them up, and rode them the few hundred yards back to the pasture where they boarded.

We made the assumption that the Wheeler-Darling-Peacock clan who boarded them had done what any functionally sane person deemed able to live without state appointed caretakers would do and switched off the current to the DOWNED ELECTRICAL FENCING AFTER A STORM. Turned out not to be so accurate- in riding Pokey back into his pasture (where we were going to put him in the barn), his metal horseshoe stepped on a live wire which sent thousands of volts through his body. I had no idea what had happened so when instantly Pokey wasn’t so damned poky anymore I pulled the reins and in so doing pulled a probably still electrified bit further into his mouth and we were off and running. It was the wildest ride of my life and it was on a horse as old as I was.

It only lasted a few seconds, but during those Pokey through his saddle, his blanket, a shoe, snapped his bit into, and finally sent me flying up and face first into Baldwin County AL dirt and horse shit. I came to, stunned and missing an epidermis on half my face and side, LITERALLY bleeding and surrounded by shit (evacuated by Pokey) and horseshoe prints that a few inches to the side would have left my brains and other organs on the ground.

Absolutely true and not the least bit embellished story: my sister ran into the field screaming and crying and hysterical… “OH SWEET JESUS LET HIM BE OKAY! OH LORD STRETCH DOWN YOUR MERCY AND DON’T LET HIM BE HURT! OH HEAL HIM! OH LORD HE’S HURT! HE’S HURT! POKEY’S HURT!” After she got Pokey calmed down she was nice enough to come back and tend to me.

At the time I had no health insurance and I could scarcely have been more broke. I could not have afforded the co-pay had I had health insurance, so I declined an ER visit. Mistake, as almost 20 years later I have severe arthritis in that neck and visible chips and mended hairline fractures.

The point of the story: when estimating the intelligence of south Alabama flatland-billies, go low.