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‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

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Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#431

Post by Prcmaker »

dkarp wrote: post #309
AYBABTME wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost drowned on a beach without surveillance, jumping into the surf waist high, for fun, until suddenly the receding water pulled me just a few meters further away and now I couldn't touch the floor anymore, and was slowly being pulled further and further away from the beach. My girlfriend of the time was on the beach far enough away that she couldn't hear or grasp that I was struggling. By luck and after perhaps…

I used to live on a popular surfing beach in Australia. Every day people would see the surfers and think it was a good place to swim and get into trouble (In general, if you see surfers then it's a bad place to swim). Always swim near the lifeguard's tower and pay attention to the flags

Yep! We used to ride the rip out on boards as it was easier than paddling through the waves. Dart across once you're out the back then catch a wave in.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#432

Post by dguest »

newaccount74 wrote: post #329
dguest wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked the lowest paying job in a ski lodge one winter. One day while waiting in the cafeteria line, one hand on the stainless steel counter, I noticed that I got a bit of a shock from the steel railing on the other side. There was also a stainless fryer on the counter, but insulated with plastic legs, so I did some experimenting by completing the circuit a few ways: - Counter to rail: weak shock - Counter to fryer…

This sounds like the counter was picking up static electricity from somewhere. Touching it will shock you momentarily, but it's not dangerous.

No it wasn't static, it felt like the 60 Hz buzz that you only get from touching something connected to the electric grid.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#433

Post by atoav »

irrational wrote: post #331
atoav wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anyone would like to explain why that didn't kill me I'm all ears. What kills people is current, not voltage. With AC having your heart beat 50 times a second can also cause you to die hours or even days after receiving a shock, but even that requires enough current to flow and cross your skin resistance. Go to ghe hospital even if you are alive and feel well after an electrical shock! Your heart may have suffer…

> your description of the shock does not sound like a fully fledged 230V 50Hz shock Do they use 230V in Portugal?

To my knowledge yes

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#434

Post by atoav »

mhandley wrote: post #345
atoav wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anyone would like to explain why that didn't kill me I'm all ears. What kills people is current, not voltage. With AC having your heart beat 50 times a second can also cause you to die hours or even days after receiving a shock, but even that requires enough current to flow and cross your skin resistance. Go to ghe hospital even if you are alive and feel well after an electrical shock! Your heart may have suffer…

Way back when I was a student living in an old rented house in London, I went into the bathroom to find the bulb had blown. It was a pull cord switch, so I didn't know if it was on or off, but knew I wouldn't be so stupid as to stick my fingers in the bulb holder while changing the bulb, so no big deal if it was still live. Standing barefoot on the enamelled metal bath, I bent the cable so I could see how to screw th…

Congrats to not dying, in Germany you now could sue your landlord for wreckless endangerment.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#435

Post by 4ggr0 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #162
4ggr0 wrote: post #23

First I thought that I'm lucky, because I'm not a big outdoor kind of guy. Then I remembered that I've had like 4 close calls while motorbiking, so to each their own risk I guess. (Let's not forget how many people die per year just by falling from a step-ladder etc.)

Something that I was thinking of last week as I stood on the top rung of a wet, icy ladder in a snowstorm, clearing wet snow off a satellite dish!

Sounds adventurous, hope the stuff you wanted to watch was well worth the risk ;)

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#436

Post by darken »

atoav wrote: post #430
bb88 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What kills people is current, not voltage. From an engineer here, let's not continue this dangerous trope. High voltage breaks down resistance and allows current to flow. Current can only flow in the presence of voltage. Proof: A 1V 1000A power supply won't kill any one and won't give a shock. A 2000V .001A power supply might give quite a shock on the other hand, and depending upon any capacitance in the supply mig…

> A 2000V .001A power supply might give quite a shock on the other hand, and depending upon any capacitance in the supply might just as well prove fatal. What does the capacitor supply, that the PSU can't? Could it be discharge current ? Before you accuse me of repeating dangerous tropes, please consider making sure to discuss it with the folks at VDE, because this is what it says in their (and the equivalent europea…

I do see where the general objection to the "current kills" comes from, even if their reasoning got a bit muddled.

All else equal, twice the voltage yields twice the current (and 4x the power).

So while yes, it's the current that kills you, in the majority of circumstances high voltage = high current. Outside of explicitly current-limited setups (e.g. a Van de Graaff generator or a desktop ionizer), most higher voltage devices will kill you more easily.

And so the "voltage doesn't kill" meme more often than not (IMO) gives laymen an undue sense of safety when working with higher voltages, at the benefit of appealing to the more electrically-inclined crowds sense of "being precisely correct".

Just look at the dozens deaths a year from people messing with microwave transformers, trying to make some pretty wood lightning art, for an example of this.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#437

Post by pezezin »

irrational wrote: post #331
atoav wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anyone would like to explain why that didn't kill me I'm all ears. What kills people is current, not voltage. With AC having your heart beat 50 times a second can also cause you to die hours or even days after receiving a shock, but even that requires enough current to flow and cross your skin resistance. Go to ghe hospital even if you are alive and feel well after an electrical shock! Your heart may have suffer…

> your description of the shock does not sound like a fully fledged 230V 50Hz shock Do they use 230V in Portugal?

All of Europe does.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#438

Post by newaccount74 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #344
newaccount74 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With AC having your heart beat 50 times a second can also cause you to die hours or even days after receiving a shock Can you point to any source for this? I have not been able to find any report of someone suddenly dying from cardiac problems days after an electric shock. It sounds kinda plausible, but I wonder if it is an urban legend. People lose limbs or die from severe electric burns, and people can die from c…

Absolutely. Shocks can cause arrhythmias that are fatal hours or days later.

I've read a lot of assertions that this is true, but I'm looking for reports of this actually occurring. Either case studies from medical journals, or even newspaper articles.

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#439

Post by twelve40 »

scruple wrote: post #383
rm445 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I remember reading a long-form story about the 'Death Valley Germans' from this site, and it was so sad - a family with young kids, that just hadn't comprehended how far they could be from help when they got into trouble in the USA. That heading towards the local military base might not help when everything is so huge that all you'll see is miles of fence.

It's a good read. Can be found here [0]. [0]: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...

omg thank you for sharing that, while their actual fate is terrible, it's laid out almost like a netflix series, can't stop reading it

Re: ‘That girl is going to get herself killed’ (2022)

#440

Post by nullsense »

xeromal wrote: post #283
angst_ridden wrote: post #208

A lot of folks don't appreciate how quickly normal can turn into dangerous in the wilderness. Because most of the time, it's all so tame. With our specialized gear and tech, there's not much threat ... most of the time. I've been on mountain peaks on nice summer days when storms appear as out of nowhere (not the typical afternoon rains), and there's lightning, high winds, and 50ºF temperature swings. In that kind of…

Just read this article and I love how they called the Grand Canyon, the inverted mountain. I hiked down into it a few years ago. I feel like I'm a well-prepared person. On less than a day mountain hikes, I always bring about 1500 calories worth of bars, 2.5L of water, a flashlight, multitool, and something warm if it's cold. It adds a bit of weight but I feel at ease with some backup tools. I made my way down to the…

>Random story but I just wanted to share that you can prepare all you want and sometimes life still tries to kick you in the butt.

Probably the most useful mantra from the prepping community that gets burned into your brain is "two is one, and one is none".

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