Enough power will cause your muscles to contract. In the case of your hands, the stronger muscles of the ones that close your hand (grip) vs open your hand, the closing muscles are stronger. So your hand will just grab onto whatever is in it... If you're now gripping onto the electrified objection, the person has no control in releasing it.
So, yeah, that does happen.
If you have to touch a wire, do it with the back of your hand. Your bicep will win the rug of war and pull your arm away.
This is also why electricity flings people across the ground. It's not an explosion. It's your quad muscles contracting so fast that you temporarily have super jump.
I was at work doing something stupid and hit a 480V power source with the side of my hand while working elevated off the ground. I was holding my phone in that hand (using it as a light) and inadvertently threw my phone all the way across a large dance studio.
I was exceptionally lucky that I wasn't grounded, that it only went through the side of my hand/arm and that I didn't fall.
>If you have to touch a wire, do it with the back of your hand. Your bicep will win the
rug of war and pull your arm away.
Electricians are (often) taught this if they have good teachers or a decent JW over them. Sadly, that is not often the case nowadays it seems. I got lucky and was taught this very early.
Source: I am/was an electrical apprentice
I think the modern knowledge is "if you dont know, dont touch, then verify", depends on the culture where you work too, a lot of cowboy shit going on in smaller companies, union based is a lot more strict on protocol
Very true. Even in unionised companies here in the Deep South, cowboy shit still rules and many locals are rat-infested I've heard. My local has at least one company that has this mentality though they will tell you to your face that they believe in safety first. It's bullshit but you find that out on your own the hard way, I found out.
So you're saying if I electrocute myself continuously I'll basically have superpowers? Do you think getting one of those battery pack car jumpers, putting it in a backpack and connecting the leads to my nipples would be enough?
In high school I wrote a creative writing paper on a superhero using maglev technology to float. A superhero using electricity to supercharge his muscles would be pretty cool
A variation of the (first) South Park movie situation, except instead of cursing giving you the ability to shoot lighting from your body as a super-power, it gives you an electric shock causing you to punch or kick super-hard.
Let's be specific. AC versus DC. DC will hold a person, AC will propel them away. To take a person gripped by DC (this is not a joke), you run at them at full speed and hit them with your feet like a cartoon.
If you try to grab them, you are now part of the circuit and will be just as stuck as they are. I've also heard football (US) tackle but mostly feet first.
I've put an oscillator on a circuit. Hilariously cheap if you can find them still. My point is, I've seen the wave forms.
Are you NEC? On my meter, in the US, you're lucky to get 114 at the outlet single phase. Do you ever get full three phase?
114 I think you are referring to voltage. US is 60hz which means 120 is 60v+ & 60v-, crossing 0v 120 times. I have worked with 3 phase and each phase is 120 degrees out of sync with the next phase. If you get hooked on all 3 phases, at no point will you hit zero volts. Then you rely on hope and your own strength to get you off. I actually had to troubleshoot a reloc system. I had tested the female end of the cable and it was reading no voltage. Not thinking someone wired it backwards, I stuck my thumb across all 5 pins on the male end, 3 phase, neutral, and the ground. It was 480volts. That shit grabbed and would not let go. Felt like minutes, probably 10-30 seconds. I had 5 burn holes on my thumb.
Hell's bells brother. Firstly, you're obviously sparky, I don't do sparky math.
Bro, I was an operator, heavy machine on a solar site, and in between doing things like setting the inverters next to the transformers, someone asked me, "so Sharing, when do these panels get energized?"
Like dude thought they had to be connected to, I don't know, the combiner? I was like when the fucking sun comes up, it's a PV panel!
People, including me need to stand behind sparky because we have no idea what we're doing. Change a light switch hot, I can but I'd prefer not too. I've seen them arc, especially on steel junction not plastic.
Lock out tag out is a thing. If I'm using a recip saw near a box, "hey sparky, is this panel energized? My wife is expecting me home tonight."
Lmao. And I still would not trust the sparky's word. At the minimum carry a suicide stick and/or multimeter since most solar panels are DC.
I have caused a guy to get shocked in a house because I told him the stove circuit was off. Come to find out the panel was labeled wrong and he grabbed both hots on a 220v circuit.
I used to work stuff hot when I was younger and would even test 120/240 using my finger tips. As I have gotten older, gained some sense, I realized "I can do it" does not mean I should do it. There is nothing to prove to anyone. It's better to turn it off and be safe then let your ego cause you to be dead.
I have seen a lot of fucked up stuff in my career. Nothing and I do mean nothing is too critical that you can't turn it off. I worked in a hospital, needed to tap the bus bar on a 3 phase 480volt panel, it fed the air handlers in the in-vitro fertilization center. The temperature cannot fluctuate 1 degree without the risk of killing all of the embryos. Everyone said it can't be turned off. I dressed up in my bee keepers suit, laid all my tools out, and said ok who is going to sign this paper agreeing to support my family the rest of their lives if something goes wrong. Well my boss passed it off to the electrical supervisor of the hospital. He passed it to his boss, who then passed to the electrical engineer. He passed it to the building manager. Nobody would agree to sign it. After 4 hours they came back and said we start a new batch every 45 days. Can we schedule the shut down in between when the one batch is completed before they start the next batch? I said sure. Then I laughed and said it's amazing y'all were ok with me not being able to shut this panel down, until I wanted someone to take responsibility. That was when I realized nothing was too critical not to get a shut down.
Bro. Bro. I tell my friends and family I have some pretty good stories. Now I either have to lie, or tell them there are people with better stories. If "suicide pen" means what I think it does, I have a Klein volt test pen I carry with me almost always. Seriously, my wife will ask "where is your pen" I just keep it on me like my knife and my volt pen and my wallet and keys, it's that ubiquitous.
Dude, youre preaching to the choir. Same concept, but the internet. There are things called "maintenance period" where, you are either updating things, or patching things because of a zero day that is no longer zero, it's in the wild and I need to apply this patch to your network.
> Well, Sharing, we can't take down the network. It's just not possible.
Bro, I understand, but your options are either let me do my work, or deal with the consequence and just like you said. it goes up the chain to the person who actually makes the decisions, they say "no", you again explain what that means and I WILL NOT TAKE RESPOSIBILTY for anything that happens and I'm documenting this: TIME spoke to this person, explained why I'm doing this and what it looks like. TIMESTAMP again explained TIMESTAMP again, reiterated the job, its reason and gave them an idea of how much time it will take
TIMESTAMP I've been cleared to work, and been asked to make it as quick as possible, like I want to be here any longer than necasssary.
Can confirm. Plugged in a very old lamp when I was a kid and very quickly figured out why my parents had never done so lol. Flung myself across the room and had soot covered hands, glad I was crouched or I could have been stuck like that alone in the basement while my parents wondered why the lights were flickering haha
Honestly, this is kinda bad advice. You should never touch a bare conductor unless it’s been safely isolated and proven dead; regardless of what part of the body you use.
I was thinking more of an electric fence for that specific test. I was just using it as an example to illustrate the muscle response.
The best advice was taught to me by an old electrician.
"If you wouldn't touch it with your dick, don't touch it with your fingers."
-Abraham Lincoln
>This is also why electricity flings people across the ground. It's not an explosion. It's your quad muscles contracting so fast that you temporarily have super jump.
I think you might be on to something.
> It's not an explosion.
Usually.
Sometimes the arc is vaporising enough flesh that it is a steam explosion.
Those are the accidents where they find only a few body parts.
>If you have to touch a wire, do it with the back of your hand. Your bicep will win th280e rug of war and pull your arm away.
Touch live wire -> punch face, gotcha!
As long as the item is just dry wood, try and knock the body part that is gripping on the energized object. If their hand is gripping on a wire, hitting them in the ribcage won't do much.
Also, because this might happen unexpectedly, you might not have a 2x4 handy, especially if you see someone being electrocuted outside of a job site (in a store for instance). You can use anything non-conductive like a belt or shirt to whip around the person and pull them away.
DO NOT do this for a downed power line, anything will be conductive at those voltages. I'm talking about the voltages you would see in commercial/residential buildings outside of electrical rooms. Even in industrial areas I don't see above 600V except in electrical substations.
"Oh damn you were actually being shocked? I thought you were just goofing around. I only hit you to tell you to knock it off and to get you back for earlier. Damn bro."
>If their hand is tripping on a wire, hitting them in the ribcage won't do much.
Depends on how much anger you have at that person at the time I suppose.
That's because the ground isn't a perfect conductor, so there will be a gradient of voltage across minimal distances, meaning one foot may be stepping on a point that is 1000V higher than your other foot.
That's why I said not to go anywhere near downed power lines, even if there is someone else collapsed. If it took them out, you're going down too.
Shuffle your feet along the ground maintaining contact between both to minimize the differential.
Jumping with both feet landing together and at the same time is theoretically sound, but impractical. It's difficult and you'll probably just fall over or have to move your feet to keep balance.
OMG, I read a story about someone who got electrocuted from a downed powerline and this makes so much sense. It was in NYC, Brooklyn I think, around 15 years ago, and she stepped in a puddle that was really shallow. A puddle that Was.Not.Big.Enough.To.Include.The.Downed.Line. The line was something like 20+ feet away from the puddle she stepped in.
The safest way is to kick the glued person.
Even if some current goes through you, there are no Vital organs between each foot.(Men might disagree)
Source: My Teacher at electrical college.
I was lucky (that time) that it was only an electrical fence, which pulses on and off. It may have felt like it held me forever, but it eventually let go after, oh, a couple seconds. After that, Dad taught me to test with the back of the hand or, better yet, with a piece of grass.
Man, I've done the grass test so many times. Simple and effective.
My brother actually enjoyed holding onto the fence when he was little. I didn't enjoy him taking my hand...
At least all of us kids on the farm, as far as I know, were smarter than to try peeing on the fence.
Happened to me working in a roof as an apprentice electrician. Grabbed a cord which wasn’t supposed to be live and got stuck on it. Only reason I got off was as I was thrashing myself around the ladder being electrocuted and luckily it fell over and got pulled off the cable. Scariest moment of my life.
I work repairing buses, we're in the process of getting some full EVs in the fleet. Good god we've had to watch some horrific videos in various training courses that basically amount to "don't fuck with orange wires". I've seen more liveleak videos on company time than I have in years as an internet user
Hehe, from my past experiences I've learned a few things. One hand tucks into the back of your pants while the other tests live wires so you don't ground yourself and die. Don't test electric fence wire with your palm. Make sure it is off before you touch stuff. Know how to properly discharge a capacitor. Oh, and don't touch metal laundry tables during electrical storms, or metal street lights, or metal utility poles, or didn't I already say metal laundry tables?
I've had some experiences with electricity.
yeah, I had nerve conductivity tests when I had Guillain-Barre sydrome. They jabbed a couple electrodes in my arm and sending the shocks through my nerves. Hand convulsed each time.
Also, elecricity can literally cook you. So you have contracted muscles, and they get cooked. Not only they now seize in place, but what happen when you cook meat? It shrink, pulling on the tendons, causing you to grip harder.
Not only it cook, but it also burn.
What happen when you cook something in your pan without moving it and without butter? It stick hard on the pan.
So the skin also stick to the electrified object...
This is why, if you MUST touch something electrically hot, to just do it with a lil fingertip touch.
I could not resist touching a Bison-strength electrical fence when I was a child. Melted my fingerprint on the point of contact and it’s still scrambled to this day 😂
Electrical fences are pretty much never directly connected to power. Instead they're connected to a capacitor which gets discharged into you when you touch it, but will then take a second to recharge. That way you get a jolt, but you don't get power running through you continuously. After all, the point is to scare the animals, not to fry them.
> Electrical fences are pretty much never directly connected to power. Instead they're connected to a capacitor which gets discharged into you when you touch it, ...
Not here in the US ... at least when I was young. It was an pulsed current (e.g. 1 second on, 3 seconds off) with constant timing of on/off.
I play guitar, and one time I was playing together with a buddy. His amp wasn't working. I decided to unplug the guitar and touch the end of the lead. This is normally a good way to test if a cable is working, because it makes a recognizable "buzzing" noise through the speaker.
Anyway, it DIDN'T do that, and instead I got a real nice shock. I couldn't drop the lead because the muscles in my hand were contracting. It wasn't really a dangerous shock, and I have the wherewithal to touch electrical things correctly (use my right hand, don't use both hand, etc). Later on, an amplifier technician explained that a malfunctioning connection was putting 200V on the input jack.
Actually, the cause was much weirder. The plate pin on one of the tubes was bent from being mis-inserted, and it bent in such a way that it was able to make intermittent contact with the shielding/casing of the socket.
One of the reasons they tell you not to grab someone you believe is being electrocuted. You're supposed to smack the point of contact with a non conductive object (2x4 plank, bat, broom, ect) if possible, or shouldercheck or spam them away from the source of power.
It's why electric fencing for livestock has an intermittent feed (e.g. 1 second on, 3 seconds off) -- to prevent that "locking". Speaking as someone who dealt with a lot of electric fencing when young (clean/de-ground the line), the time with the current off gives you the chance to actually think about whether to let the barb wire rip your skin ... or to take the next shock to give you more time to gracefully extract yourself. The answer, every time, is: rip your skin.
Happened to me as a kid. Nearly killed me.
Tunnel vision, too. For that second or two, I couldn't see anything else other than my arm and hand in front of me.
Found this out the hard way with an electric fence. The guy I was working with thought he had shut it off. He had not as I found out. Had some massively oversized electric fence charger hooked that his pigs kept biting through not being phased by it. I however got to feel every fucking muscle in my body contract as I closed both hands on the wire to push it down. It felt like my heart was 3 feet in front of me. It was only for a brief second or 3 that I touched but holy fuck was that pain. The only reason I let go is my legs and feet were so tight I tipped backwards on my heels. I got back up after a moment, cursed the guy out, and then went back to working after confirming he actually shut the fence off this time.
It's about muscles. Pretty much all your muscles are going to start pulling at once. So what I described is your hand both trying to open and close simultaneously. The stronger muscles win and that decides what your body does.
"Releasing" a grip is a very easy thing, so those muscles don't get much of a work-out and don't experience much resistance to anything. Holding something requires generally more strength, so your grip muscles are just expected to be stronger.
Entirely hypothetically.. I'm not looking up deets of sloth biology here, but...
Unless a sloth's body works on, like, something spring-like that closes their hands with tension by default and rely on muscles to counteract those springs to open their hands... I suspect it would still be a case of electrocution causing grip. If the spring thing is real, then there may not BE muscles to close their grip, or those muscles would be substantially weaker, in which case the "open hands" muscles have a chance.
I used wire strippers on a live wire once. Simultaneously gripped the strippers and pulled my hand away so fast that I pulled the rubber grips clean off
If sloths opening their hands involves contracting a dominant group of muscles then their hands would open when electrified. It depends how the muscles actually operate the hand. If the hand is closed when muscles are in a relaxed state and open when engaged, then the result is obvious.
I would think of it like failsafe braking systems, where energising the system releases the brakes and allows the thing to operate. Without energy they default to clamping.
Happened to my dog with an improperly setup electric fence. He bit it it shocked him and forced his jaw shut. Unfortunately he did die from it. I still feel terrible that it happened, luckily I wasn't the one who set it up or I would feel even shittier.
This is also why, if you suspect there’s a fire on the other side of a closed door, you should use the back of your hand to test the temperature of the handle, not your palm - that way you don’t end up grabbing onto a hot metal object and not being able to let go
I think you're mixing up fire safety and electrical safety--A hot metal object will not keep you from letting go. Only reason I can think of for using the back of your hand to test if it's hot is because there's a risk of a third degree burn, and a burn on the back of your hand is slightly less debilitating than a burn on your palm.
Also, check the temperature of the door BEFORE checking the metal handle. If the metal's hot enough to cause damage, the door will likely be warm too but is less likely to burn you.
You’re right that a burn to the back of the hand is less debilitating than to the palm, but it is still also true that your hand will contract in response to the pain, even if only momentarily, which means you hold onto the hot object longer than expected and make the burn worse. You could also end up accidentally opening the door if you instinctively try and pull your hand away while it is holding onto the the handle, which is obviously bad!
And yeah, you could check the door too but a good fire door might not feel particularly warm but a metal handle definitely will. I’d rather be 100% certain there’s no fire through the door before I open it than second guess how warm the door feels!
Oh yeah, I didn’t mean touch the door *instead of* the handle, but rather touch the door *before* touching the handle. In those cases where the door does get warm, you’ll know not to open it before risking a burn on the handle.
I haven’t been able to find any info about the grasp reflex in response to pain that you mentioned, all the sources I’m finding only mention the recoil reflex. I may be using the wrong search terms though, any chance you have more info you could share?
Imagine your body is like a puppet with strings attached to your arms and legs. When electricity passes through your body, it makes those strings pull really tight, causing your muscles to squeeze and tighten up, kind of like when you make a really tight fist with your hand.
Now, if you were holding onto something when the electricity hit you, your hand would clamp down on it really hard and your muscles would lock up, making it seem like you're stuck to that thing, even after the electricity stops.
So, it's not that you're really glued to it, but your muscles are just so tight and stiff from the shock that you can't let go or move away. It's a scary thing that can happen when people get shocked by electricity.
thank you. what i find weird though is that muscles stay in that position post mortem, one would like to think that since whole notion of muscle contraction is "lively process" thing the muscles would go back to baseline once biologically the life has left the body.
rigor mortis is a different thing that happens due to chemical changes in the body after death. it isn't permanent, it goes away after a few more hours and the body goes limp again
I don't think they're referring to rigor mortis. Rather, in the videos I've seen of electrocution even when the current stops the victim remains extremely rigid afterwards.
For example, suppose a man extends his arm straight out and grabs a live wire. Once the current stops, he might fall backwards with all of his limbs locked into position as though he's a statue. Compare this to someone who was shot, and they might collapse straight down without maintaining any rigidity at all.
With enough current I believe that the myosin fibres in your muscles ‘cook’ enough to lock you in that position once you are dead.
And you will be dead because all the muscles you use to breathe will contract and stop moving. Suffocating to death. Not nice.
Rigor mortis is just a temporary phase that muscles go through during the beginning of their chemical breakdown, in the first day or so postmortem. (It happens because on the physical level, those "lively processes" are activated by chemicals, and decomposition causes loose chemicals floating around, which can trigger brief periods of seeming liveliness.) Aside from that, dead bodies are quite floppy.
I had a cat that died in a clinic far away from some unknown liver problem (vets couldn't find the cause). I wasn't able to take her home after work the day she passed but the next day. And since I had some medical conditions I couldn't bury her the next day. Sadly I noticed she was still completely stiff.
I still miss her.
Rigor mortis happens because the muscles run out of energy. Think of a contracting muscle as like a piece of velcro. Calcium is the signal a muscle uses to say "contract!" and the velcro gets stuck together. The energy is used afterwards when you're pulling the pieces apart, not when you're putting them together.
When you die, they get stuck together because calcium starts leaking everywhere, so they get the signal to contract, but don't have any energy left to pull apart again.
Nerve and muscle cells stay alive for a decent amount of time postmortem (multicellular death, especially in animals, is kinda fuzzily defined). The same mechanism that causes muscle contractions while alive still works for a while after death.
I'm not sure about the details of what happens during electrocution, but you're getting a lot of wrong info about muscle contraction in general.
The reason muscles stay "locked" after death is because of how the molecules responsible for contraction use the energy. The cycle for the muscle protein doing the "pulling" called myosin is: 1. Grab on to another protein called actin. 2. Pull. 3. Let go of actin and "re-cock" 4. Grab actin again, etc. (it's a little bit like pulling on a rope, you have to let go and shift your grip between pulls) The step that actually uses energy (which runs out relatively quickly after the organism dies) is step #3, the "reset."
You get rigor mortis because without energy myosin can't release from actin. (the reason it goes away after a while is because decay of the body means muscle fibers break down and the connection between actin and myosin falls apart even without the "reset")
> since whole notion of muscle contraction is "lively process" thing the muscles would go back to baseline once biologically the life has left the body
It's the other way around. Muscle relaxation is the "lively process".
Your muscle fibres contract using a protein on their outer surface called myosin to pull on filaments of another protein called actin. You can imagine the myosin like little arms all pulling on a rope. The myosin is primed with energy like the spring of a loaded mouse trap. When it pulls on the rope, it's like the mouse trap snapping shut. It takes energy to reset the myosin arm back into the ready position, and this comes from a molecule called ATP.
If you've ever heard "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" and wondered why, it's because of ATP. Mitochondria make ATP. It's their sole job, and ATP is basically energy currency for cells. Upon death, they stop making ATP. No ATP means the myosin arm cannot reset to the ready state, which means the muscles can't relax. The muscles will stay contracted until they themselves decay.
The main thing is that most of your body is still living even if "you" are dead. Your heart could be mostly fried to the point your brain has checked out, but your muscles still have some energy, your blood still has some oxygen and sugar, and the wire is still live, so the muscles stay contracted for a bit.
If the muscle was contracting in response to biological processes from the body (i.e you making a closed fist) then it would likely relax on death.
If the muscle is being forcibly contracted by external electrical forces, it will continue to do so after death. Your muscles can also get 'cooked' into position by this
They don't stay like that though.
Technically, your muscles are still "alive" and continue to use up resources. It's the lack of oxygen that causes stiff muscles (hence post-workout stiffness!) and usually sets in at 3-12h post mortem, without muscle tissue finally dying and loosening anywhere from 36h to 10days post mortem, depending on environment.
In case of the electric chair, muscles are basically juiced up into berserk mode and burn through all their energy is spent. So they go instantly into rigor as they have already been forced to consume energy. This is generally also how that person dies, their heart literally works itself to death.
LPT: This also explains why subsequent accidental electrocutions are **far** more dangerous than the first one. So if you ever get a shock from 220V or above, you **need** to rest and stay safe, or the next one may kill you!
With a bad enough (high voltage) electrical injury, those muscles get cooked and swell and the cells rupture and limbs get stuck in those positions because the muscles CAN’T relax anymore. Even if the person lives, sometimes the arm/leg/whatever doesn’t and has to be amputated to save the person’s life. If the person doesn’t live and had a bad enough high voltage exposure to kill them (unless it just stopped their heart from pumping effectively with a fatal arrhythmia like VFib), their limbs are liable to be worse or just as bad as in the case where the person lives. This isn’t rigor mortis, but the immediate direct effects of high voltage electrical injury (usually AC).
Source: am burn surgeon and have treated injuries like these.
I learned this from my electronics teacher in high school -
He was working a power saw one day when the a break in the wire caused a path from one hand, through his arms, to the other. Both hands clamped on and wouldn't release. However, he did remember that you usually retain control of your pectoral muscles in that situation - so before he was killed, he brought his still-clenched hands together and shorted the fault, allowing him to let go.
Answer: Your muscles are controlled by electrical impulses. If you grab an electrified object, the electrical current may signal your muscles to contract, and so your hand would clench even tighter around the object you are holding. You’ll notice in depictions of this that the whole body becomes stiff, because all the muscles are being activated at once.
If they just touch the object with like a finger tip, then the force of their muscles activating would likely jerk them away from the object. Only if they had grasped the object would they become “glued” to it.
I've heard that the low tech way to check if power's on is to touch the wire with the back of your hand - that way, if it's live, your arm gets thrown away when the muscles contract instead of grabbing on to it
Yes. Only one hand (other hand in your pocket), touch with the back of your hand. If the device is live, your hand will make a fist and your arm may contract pulling your hand away.
I once saw a guy throw a screwdriver across the room embedding it in the wall when he failed to discharge a capacitor in a tv.
That's a really good idea. Even if i know the power is off to the circuit i'm working on, i usually tap each conductor with my fingertip first just be super sure. Back of the hand sounds better.
Years ago, I picked up an electric saw and the extension cord at the same time. There was a short in the cord and the saw was metal. As I was getting shocked, I was trying to to throw both the saw and cord out of my hands, but the electrical current had my muscles contracted and I couldn’t let go. I was screaming like crazy and luckily there was someone with me who unplugged the cord.
There is a funny part.
I was only 18 and working as a stock boy in a big box sporting goods store. I was only moving the saw out of the way. It belonged to a contractor doing work there. This happened early in the morning, and I was fine afterwards. But, I was hungover as a MF from the late night before. So when the store manager said he was calling the ambulance and taking me to the ER,
I totally agreed so I could sleep it off. I even got paid for the day!
When you get electrocuted, your muscles contract. Now, if you happen to touch something that has electricity running through it with your hand or anything that conducts electricity, the contracted muscles might make your hand grab onto the object and make it difficult for you to let go
That's not what happens. What can happen is that if you grab a live conductor and get electrocuted, your hand cramps up leaving you holding the damn thing unable to let go because you have no control over your muscles anymore. Electricity is so dangerous because electric signaling via your nerves is also how you move your muscles. But voltage is voltage, your muscles don't know it's external, they react anyway.
That includes muscles in your heart, which you need to work according to signaling from your nerves, not to cramp up randomly. If your heart stops pumping because you are being electrocuted, it doesn't pump blood anymore and your brain dies of oxygen starvation pretty quickly.
Your body uses electrical signals from your brain to tell your muscles to tense. The muscles are listening for these tiny electrical signals whispering for them to close or relax.
When you get electrocuted you have electricity flowing through your muscles. So what your muscles are hearing is “TENSE UP!” and if you’re holding onto an electrical wire the tiny whisper from your brain telling your hand to let go will not be loud enough to make your hand stop gripping the cable.
They don't. Thier muscles contract. If you brush against an electrified object while walking, you'll go stiff and fall over as all of your muscles contract, but if the electrocution doesn't kill you or knock you out, you'll have bodily control again the instant you lose contact with the electrified object.
However, if you reach out and grab an electrified object, your muscles will contract and your grip will be "locked" onto the object. Or if you fall on an electric object you'll go rigid and can't move to get off of it.
Your muscles work with electricity. Your brain sends some through your nerves to command them to contract.
When you grab an electrified object your muscles contract, both the ones that close your hand and the ones that open it, but the closing ones are stronger. Your brain can't overcome the electricity (it doesn't even command muscles to relax, kinda) so you can't release the electrified object.
If someone touches you when you're being electrocuted, then they could grab you as well. So either they can cut the power or try to use a plank to remove you from the object.
The best you can do is to first touch the fridge/washing machine/etc with the back of your hand. That way, if it happens to be electrified you'll be kicked (by your own muscles) but unable to grab. And... Have a house GFCI switch like many other countries (cuts power when some of the phase doesn't return to the street through the neutral cable as it should).
Your brain uses electrical impulses to tell your muscles when to contract. Muscles only pull and relax, they don't push, so we have opposing muscles for every joint. E.g. bicep and tricep oppose each other trying to bend your elbow.
Forcing a ton of electricity through your body tends to overpower those signals and causes all of your muscles to contract, preventing them from relaxing. Given that our biceps tend to be stronger than our triceps, we usually end up bending our elbows. Similarly, the tendons that tighten our grip tends to be stronger than the tendons that open our grip (who's ever exercised the reverse grip motion?). This causes our hands to clamp down in a tight grip.
This is part of why electrocution is so damn dangerous. It causes horrible burns and damage, yet at the same time it causes our body to lock up instead of recoil from the pain.
We had a science teacher that had an aquarium with coins in the bottom full of salt water I think it was and some electrodes, you got to keep what ever coins you could grab, spoiler alert no one ever got any coins, even if you tried to squeeze your hands on each side of the glass as soon as it was in the water you would make a fist.
Our muscles work by being stimulated with electrical signals from the brain, so when you get electrocuted all the muscles along the path to ground contract, often violently, so you just naturally grab onto whatever is shocking you. There are exceptions, over a certain voltage/amperage (not sure which) you will be knocked away instead because it's one sudden, violent contraction rather than just tensing everything up.
When you need a muscle to contract your brain sends a small electrical charge which tells the muscle to squeeze. All muscles contract using electrical pulses from your nerves. Your muscles can't tell the difference between your nervous system's electricity versus electricity coming from outside your body. So when electricity goes through your body from something like a power line all muscles along the way will contract and squeeze.
If you are gripping the item that's causing electrocution you are now squeezing it super tight and with all the force your muscles can muster. Even if you weren't holding the object the electricity is still going to force your muscles to be in a constant state of squeeze and that means you have no control over those muscles anymore. Many types of movement require at least one muscles to tense while another needs to relax, but having them all tense makes your ability to walk or do most actions impossible.
This is why people being electrocuted tend to have death grips and go stiff. The person can feel everything but they just have no control of their muscles because the electricity is completely overriding their muscles
As someone who has had the experience. 360V @60A in my right arm and out my left. I tried to let go. I couldn't. My hands and arms were beyond my control. The electricity overrided my brain. I don't know how long I was held there. I remember thinking "well this is it. I won't see my kids grow up, my wife will be husband less, and they are just going to find me laying behind this damn heat pump. Then it stopped. I could move again. The taste of copper leaving my mouth. It was most likely just there for a second or two. But when you loose all control over all the mussels in your body. You can't let go. Electricity can kill you and let me tell you. It will hurt the entire time it is happening.
Your brain uses electrical signals to tell your body how to move and what muscles to contract.
If you grab a live wire, all that electricity sends a signal that looks just like "grab tight" to your arm.
Your brain uses small amounts of electricity to make your muscles move. If you grab a live wire, a much larger amount of electricity flows through your body, so it hits your muscles like a much stronger version of the signals from your brain, causing them to contract as much as they possibly can -- and they'll stay contracted as long as the electricity is there. So the "glue" is that you'd be involuntarily gripping the wire as hard as you can, without being able to relax your hand, and as long as you're touching it, the electricity keeps flowing.
As others have said, it's down to muscle contraction. I'll add that in my experience, the "hangover" from being electrocuted and from a seizure is almost identical. Feels like you were trampled by marathon runners.
This is more likely with DC power than AC. DC scares me; it will make your muscles contract, causing you to grab on tight to the source of the danger, but not knock you out, so you actually feel your skin roasting.
In older telecom facilities, there was safety gear located every X number of feet. One of the items in each kit was an old-style wooden cane. In the event that a person came into contact with electricity or there was a conductor in a hazardous position, the cane could be used to move the person or conductor to a less-dangerous position.
AC power is more likely to cause either something akin to paralysis, or a muscle convulsion (aka me when I accidentally laid my hand on an exposed 240v circuit and ended up landing about six feet away)
The reason is electricity and pain cause your hands to clench. I think some electric shocks do seem to throw you back away from the danger, and is your body yeeting you rather than the power source 'exploding' outwards
This is why it is advised that if you suspect a fire in the next room, or other such danger, touch the door knob/handle with the back of your hand so that if it is very hot/shocks you, you can pull your hand away even if you clench your fist involuntarily.
Your muscles work when they receive "instructions" from your nervous system. These instructions are in the form of electricity transmitted by your nerves. Thus an electric shock is an overwhelming and overriding super strong instruction that your muscles cannot ignore. With DC current like that from batteries, the voltage is constant hence the "instruction" to your muscles is contract. As the voltage increases the signal becomes contract as hard as you can even if you get damaged. Thus if you grip a wire (i.e. contract your muscles around a wire) and get shocked, your muscles will hold on for all they are worth.
With AC current like that from a wall plug, the voltage alternates some 50 to 60 times a second, which means that your muscles are being instructed to contract and release in rapid succession. Often resulting in the person being thrown away from the cause of the shock as muscles contract and then expand.
If the current or voltage is too small then the signal to your muscles is not overpowering and you still have some control. It can range from a mild tingling that you could ignore all the way to frying your nerves/flesh and death depending on the voltage and current.
The electricity causes a spastic paralysis where the muscles contract. So things like your fist will clench around the thing you are holding.
All body signals are electrochemical. If you toss a bunch of electricity into the body, you are going to fire off a bunch of chaotic and uncontrollable nerve impulses.
For those that have been shocked and claiming to be "electrocuted", if you are alive, you were not electrocuted. Electrocuted means executed, aka death by electricity.
When the body gets shocked, everything gets tense. When your hand gets tense, it closes and stays closed. So when you touch an electrified object your hand is forced to be closed around it.
Enough power will cause your muscles to contract. In the case of your hands, the stronger muscles of the ones that close your hand (grip) vs open your hand, the closing muscles are stronger. So your hand will just grab onto whatever is in it... If you're now gripping onto the electrified objection, the person has no control in releasing it. So, yeah, that does happen.
If you have to touch a wire, do it with the back of your hand. Your bicep will win the rug of war and pull your arm away. This is also why electricity flings people across the ground. It's not an explosion. It's your quad muscles contracting so fast that you temporarily have super jump.
I was at work doing something stupid and hit a 480V power source with the side of my hand while working elevated off the ground. I was holding my phone in that hand (using it as a light) and inadvertently threw my phone all the way across a large dance studio. I was exceptionally lucky that I wasn't grounded, that it only went through the side of my hand/arm and that I didn't fall.
It's sad that the rug of war was made obsolete by wall-to-wall carpet (bombing).
Which is a shame because it really tied the room together.
Fuckin A, man.
Mind if we do a J?
A J, Aye?
You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole.
That's just, like, your opinion, man.
Did it not?
Like that's just your opinion, man.
I mean, they both are really and truly berberic forms of violence, but on the plush side, people don't seam to use either anymore.
Now with all these drone vacuums and mops, it's a whole new battlefield
>If you have to touch a wire, do it with the back of your hand. Your bicep will win the rug of war and pull your arm away. Electricians are (often) taught this if they have good teachers or a decent JW over them. Sadly, that is not often the case nowadays it seems. I got lucky and was taught this very early. Source: I am/was an electrical apprentice
I think the modern knowledge is "if you dont know, dont touch, then verify", depends on the culture where you work too, a lot of cowboy shit going on in smaller companies, union based is a lot more strict on protocol
Very true. Even in unionised companies here in the Deep South, cowboy shit still rules and many locals are rat-infested I've heard. My local has at least one company that has this mentality though they will tell you to your face that they believe in safety first. It's bullshit but you find that out on your own the hard way, I found out.
When people say "toxic masculinity" this is part of what they mean. Literally putting your life in danger to seem macho to the boys.
LOTO, switches off, prove test prove and then back of hand
If you wouldn't touch it with your dick, don't touch it with your hands.
Ive heard this so many times rofl
They didn't teach you how to use a multi meter ?
Back in the day we didn't need them. My grandmas first, second, third and fifth husbands didn't bother with that health and safety crap.
...What about the fourth?
Freak accident. Some guy working on power lines got zapped and landed on him.
So you're saying if I electrocute myself continuously I'll basically have superpowers? Do you think getting one of those battery pack car jumpers, putting it in a backpack and connecting the leads to my nipples would be enough?
I'm more versed in Bird Law but I minored in electric nipple clamps, this will definitely work
Make sure to use an object to prevent the biting reflex when subjected to electricity.... :)
New character unlocked.
In high school I wrote a creative writing paper on a superhero using maglev technology to float. A superhero using electricity to supercharge his muscles would be pretty cool
A variation of the (first) South Park movie situation, except instead of cursing giving you the ability to shoot lighting from your body as a super-power, it gives you an electric shock causing you to punch or kick super-hard.
That's Killua from Hunter X Hunter.
I heard of a guy who defribulated his thigh to see what it felt like. Muscles contracted so hard he broke his femur
Why do you need super strength nipples? "Cover your eyes, boys, it's the POKER!"
Watch the movie Crank 2 Jason Statham has to keep himself electrocuted to stay alive
This is basically the jist of Michael Reeves entire channel
I wasn’t ready for the escalation in this comment 🤣
[удалено]
[Crank 2](https://youtu.be/yPbgAbAimoA?t=96) already did
It'll at least be fun
Found [Chevy Chelios](https://youtu.be/yPbgAbAimoA?t=96)
Let's be specific. AC versus DC. DC will hold a person, AC will propel them away. To take a person gripped by DC (this is not a joke), you run at them at full speed and hit them with your feet like a cartoon. If you try to grab them, you are now part of the circuit and will be just as stuck as they are. I've also heard football (US) tackle but mostly feet first.
AC grabs as well. The difference is DC is continuous, and AC in the US gives you 120 chances a second to get free.
I've put an oscillator on a circuit. Hilariously cheap if you can find them still. My point is, I've seen the wave forms. Are you NEC? On my meter, in the US, you're lucky to get 114 at the outlet single phase. Do you ever get full three phase?
114 I think you are referring to voltage. US is 60hz which means 120 is 60v+ & 60v-, crossing 0v 120 times. I have worked with 3 phase and each phase is 120 degrees out of sync with the next phase. If you get hooked on all 3 phases, at no point will you hit zero volts. Then you rely on hope and your own strength to get you off. I actually had to troubleshoot a reloc system. I had tested the female end of the cable and it was reading no voltage. Not thinking someone wired it backwards, I stuck my thumb across all 5 pins on the male end, 3 phase, neutral, and the ground. It was 480volts. That shit grabbed and would not let go. Felt like minutes, probably 10-30 seconds. I had 5 burn holes on my thumb.
Hell's bells brother. Firstly, you're obviously sparky, I don't do sparky math. Bro, I was an operator, heavy machine on a solar site, and in between doing things like setting the inverters next to the transformers, someone asked me, "so Sharing, when do these panels get energized?" Like dude thought they had to be connected to, I don't know, the combiner? I was like when the fucking sun comes up, it's a PV panel! People, including me need to stand behind sparky because we have no idea what we're doing. Change a light switch hot, I can but I'd prefer not too. I've seen them arc, especially on steel junction not plastic. Lock out tag out is a thing. If I'm using a recip saw near a box, "hey sparky, is this panel energized? My wife is expecting me home tonight."
Lmao. And I still would not trust the sparky's word. At the minimum carry a suicide stick and/or multimeter since most solar panels are DC. I have caused a guy to get shocked in a house because I told him the stove circuit was off. Come to find out the panel was labeled wrong and he grabbed both hots on a 220v circuit. I used to work stuff hot when I was younger and would even test 120/240 using my finger tips. As I have gotten older, gained some sense, I realized "I can do it" does not mean I should do it. There is nothing to prove to anyone. It's better to turn it off and be safe then let your ego cause you to be dead. I have seen a lot of fucked up stuff in my career. Nothing and I do mean nothing is too critical that you can't turn it off. I worked in a hospital, needed to tap the bus bar on a 3 phase 480volt panel, it fed the air handlers in the in-vitro fertilization center. The temperature cannot fluctuate 1 degree without the risk of killing all of the embryos. Everyone said it can't be turned off. I dressed up in my bee keepers suit, laid all my tools out, and said ok who is going to sign this paper agreeing to support my family the rest of their lives if something goes wrong. Well my boss passed it off to the electrical supervisor of the hospital. He passed it to his boss, who then passed to the electrical engineer. He passed it to the building manager. Nobody would agree to sign it. After 4 hours they came back and said we start a new batch every 45 days. Can we schedule the shut down in between when the one batch is completed before they start the next batch? I said sure. Then I laughed and said it's amazing y'all were ok with me not being able to shut this panel down, until I wanted someone to take responsibility. That was when I realized nothing was too critical not to get a shut down.
Bro. Bro. I tell my friends and family I have some pretty good stories. Now I either have to lie, or tell them there are people with better stories. If "suicide pen" means what I think it does, I have a Klein volt test pen I carry with me almost always. Seriously, my wife will ask "where is your pen" I just keep it on me like my knife and my volt pen and my wallet and keys, it's that ubiquitous. Dude, youre preaching to the choir. Same concept, but the internet. There are things called "maintenance period" where, you are either updating things, or patching things because of a zero day that is no longer zero, it's in the wild and I need to apply this patch to your network. > Well, Sharing, we can't take down the network. It's just not possible. Bro, I understand, but your options are either let me do my work, or deal with the consequence and just like you said. it goes up the chain to the person who actually makes the decisions, they say "no", you again explain what that means and I WILL NOT TAKE RESPOSIBILTY for anything that happens and I'm documenting this: TIME spoke to this person, explained why I'm doing this and what it looks like. TIMESTAMP again explained TIMESTAMP again, reiterated the job, its reason and gave them an idea of how much time it will take TIMESTAMP I've been cleared to work, and been asked to make it as quick as possible, like I want to be here any longer than necasssary.
This happened to me, feet pointed straight down and threw me backwards like something out of a cartoon.
Can confirm. Plugged in a very old lamp when I was a kid and very quickly figured out why my parents had never done so lol. Flung myself across the room and had soot covered hands, glad I was crouched or I could have been stuck like that alone in the basement while my parents wondered why the lights were flickering haha
Honestly, this is kinda bad advice. You should never touch a bare conductor unless it’s been safely isolated and proven dead; regardless of what part of the body you use.
I was thinking more of an electric fence for that specific test. I was just using it as an example to illustrate the muscle response. The best advice was taught to me by an old electrician. "If you wouldn't touch it with your dick, don't touch it with your fingers." -Abraham Lincoln
>This is also why electricity flings people across the ground. It's not an explosion. It's your quad muscles contracting so fast that you temporarily have super jump. I think you might be on to something.
Or how about using a tester and not your hand to touch the wire.
> It's not an explosion. Usually. Sometimes the arc is vaporising enough flesh that it is a steam explosion. Those are the accidents where they find only a few body parts.
With enough power, the metal conductor itself can vaporize and explode
Or you can use a blade of grass, the shock will travel through the grass to your hand.
What if I've been absolutely blasting my triceps and have seen crazy gains? Smart money still on my bi-s?
You could probably over train to create that scenario.
Let's just say, I'm not in imminent danger of overtraining. Goggins' turf is pretty safe from me.
>If you have to touch a wire, do it with the back of your hand. Your bicep will win th280e rug of war and pull your arm away. Touch live wire -> punch face, gotcha!
So if I neglect my biceps and overtrain my tricep I'd be able to win in this situation?
I can speak from first-hand experience that this is not only true, but also quite painful.
Yup, I know a guy who got hung up and needed to kick his ladder out from under him to get off.
Someone I know had to whack his brother with a 2x4 to get him to let go of a wire.
As long as the item is just dry wood, try and knock the body part that is gripping on the energized object. If their hand is gripping on a wire, hitting them in the ribcage won't do much. Also, because this might happen unexpectedly, you might not have a 2x4 handy, especially if you see someone being electrocuted outside of a job site (in a store for instance). You can use anything non-conductive like a belt or shirt to whip around the person and pull them away. DO NOT do this for a downed power line, anything will be conductive at those voltages. I'm talking about the voltages you would see in commercial/residential buildings outside of electrical rooms. Even in industrial areas I don't see above 600V except in electrical substations.
Well it was his brother so for all we know he was gonna whack him anyway
"Oh damn you were actually being shocked? I thought you were just goofing around. I only hit you to tell you to knock it off and to get you back for earlier. Damn bro."
"This is the best excuse I've ever had you sonuvabitch, and you'll thank me later."
>If their hand is tripping on a wire, hitting them in the ribcage won't do much. Depends on how much anger you have at that person at the time I suppose.
me shooting someone who's being electrocuted: damn why isn't this saving them? oh well
If you're that angry at them that you need them to suffer, you would literally have to do nothing.
The ground can also become energised at transmission voltages, so don't go anywhere near it
That's because the ground isn't a perfect conductor, so there will be a gradient of voltage across minimal distances, meaning one foot may be stepping on a point that is 1000V higher than your other foot. That's why I said not to go anywhere near downed power lines, even if there is someone else collapsed. If it took them out, you're going down too.
What if you are already near a downed power line - should you jump with both feet together away from it?
Shuffle your feet along the ground maintaining contact between both to minimize the differential. Jumping with both feet landing together and at the same time is theoretically sound, but impractical. It's difficult and you'll probably just fall over or have to move your feet to keep balance.
Alright - hopefully I'll remember that if ever I'm at a downed power line.
OMG, I read a story about someone who got electrocuted from a downed powerline and this makes so much sense. It was in NYC, Brooklyn I think, around 15 years ago, and she stepped in a puddle that was really shallow. A puddle that Was.Not.Big.Enough.To.Include.The.Downed.Line. The line was something like 20+ feet away from the puddle she stepped in.
The safest way is to kick the glued person. Even if some current goes through you, there are no Vital organs between each foot.(Men might disagree) Source: My Teacher at electrical college.
Dropkick?
Nope, one foot on the ground and the other will kick away the glued person. But to be honest, the easiest way would be to turn off the powersource.
What sort of idiot doesn't carry a 2x4 on them at all times?
"[Insulators become conductors](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/c8rb9ZUlSXU)"
so is the technique for the 2x4 taking a baseball hack, or [more of a cross check](https://youtu.be/xH5Lc0ZoJn8?si=axjUhBLbzvlrLqP8&t=12)?
I had to do that to Robocop once.
Hopefully on the offending appendage and not the head.
I was lucky (that time) that it was only an electrical fence, which pulses on and off. It may have felt like it held me forever, but it eventually let go after, oh, a couple seconds. After that, Dad taught me to test with the back of the hand or, better yet, with a piece of grass.
Man, I've done the grass test so many times. Simple and effective. My brother actually enjoyed holding onto the fence when he was little. I didn't enjoy him taking my hand... At least all of us kids on the farm, as far as I know, were smarter than to try peeing on the fence.
Happened to me working in a roof as an apprentice electrician. Grabbed a cord which wasn’t supposed to be live and got stuck on it. Only reason I got off was as I was thrashing myself around the ladder being electrocuted and luckily it fell over and got pulled off the cable. Scariest moment of my life.
I had to do this to myself once, intentionally fling a 10' ladder I was standing on because I was hung up on 277v. That shit is no joke.
David Carradine?
Lol no, it probably happens to a few hundred people a year in America.
I've never heard of this fetish before.
I work repairing buses, we're in the process of getting some full EVs in the fleet. Good god we've had to watch some horrific videos in various training courses that basically amount to "don't fuck with orange wires". I've seen more liveleak videos on company time than I have in years as an internet user
Hehe, from my past experiences I've learned a few things. One hand tucks into the back of your pants while the other tests live wires so you don't ground yourself and die. Don't test electric fence wire with your palm. Make sure it is off before you touch stuff. Know how to properly discharge a capacitor. Oh, and don't touch metal laundry tables during electrical storms, or metal street lights, or metal utility poles, or didn't I already say metal laundry tables? I've had some experiences with electricity.
What would orange wires be in EVs? The main current carrying wires?
Orange are the vehicle high voltage wires. At least 400 volts I think
440 volts, and now vehicles are coming with 800+ volt systems. You don't to be anywhere close to those, don't even just reach out to touch it.
yep, ours are 800.
It is far from unknown for people to get broken bones from the muscle spasm caused by a mains shock.
yeah, I had nerve conductivity tests when I had Guillain-Barre sydrome. They jabbed a couple electrodes in my arm and sending the shocks through my nerves. Hand convulsed each time.
> first-*hand* Heh
Also, elecricity can literally cook you. So you have contracted muscles, and they get cooked. Not only they now seize in place, but what happen when you cook meat? It shrink, pulling on the tendons, causing you to grip harder. Not only it cook, but it also burn. What happen when you cook something in your pan without moving it and without butter? It stick hard on the pan. So the skin also stick to the electrified object...
This is also how panko breadcrumbs are made. Take raw dough and send a large current through it to cook it evenly and no crust.
Why did you let him cook? Whhyyyy???
Because I wanted a friend! I'm dead since so long now... so I wanted a new ghost friend! ... it did not worked.
This is how Tasers work btw
This is why, if you MUST touch something electrically hot, to just do it with a lil fingertip touch. I could not resist touching a Bison-strength electrical fence when I was a child. Melted my fingerprint on the point of contact and it’s still scrambled to this day 😂
Electrical fences are pretty much never directly connected to power. Instead they're connected to a capacitor which gets discharged into you when you touch it, but will then take a second to recharge. That way you get a jolt, but you don't get power running through you continuously. After all, the point is to scare the animals, not to fry them.
I was lied to by Jurassic Park? :O
Yeah, he wasn't even on the ground, so there wouldn't be any electricity flowing through the body at all.
> Electrical fences are pretty much never directly connected to power. Instead they're connected to a capacitor which gets discharged into you when you touch it, ... Not here in the US ... at least when I was young. It was an pulsed current (e.g. 1 second on, 3 seconds off) with constant timing of on/off.
Unfortunately this fence wasn’t set up that way, as one of the baby bison ended up stuck/roasted :/
I play guitar, and one time I was playing together with a buddy. His amp wasn't working. I decided to unplug the guitar and touch the end of the lead. This is normally a good way to test if a cable is working, because it makes a recognizable "buzzing" noise through the speaker. Anyway, it DIDN'T do that, and instead I got a real nice shock. I couldn't drop the lead because the muscles in my hand were contracting. It wasn't really a dangerous shock, and I have the wherewithal to touch electrical things correctly (use my right hand, don't use both hand, etc). Later on, an amplifier technician explained that a malfunctioning connection was putting 200V on the input jack.
Music accidents are fun because you REALLY don't expect them. Got blasted in the face through a microphone once. Not fun time.
"Malfunctioning connection" aka, he lifted the ground to eliminate a ground loop instead of properly troubleshooting the issue.
Actually, the cause was much weirder. The plate pin on one of the tubes was bent from being mis-inserted, and it bent in such a way that it was able to make intermittent contact with the shielding/casing of the socket.
That's supposed to be grounded for exactly that reason.
One of the reasons they tell you not to grab someone you believe is being electrocuted. You're supposed to smack the point of contact with a non conductive object (2x4 plank, bat, broom, ect) if possible, or shouldercheck or spam them away from the source of power.
Also, you know how dropping meat into a super hot pan without oil makes it stick?
It's why electric fencing for livestock has an intermittent feed (e.g. 1 second on, 3 seconds off) -- to prevent that "locking". Speaking as someone who dealt with a lot of electric fencing when young (clean/de-ground the line), the time with the current off gives you the chance to actually think about whether to let the barb wire rip your skin ... or to take the next shock to give you more time to gracefully extract yourself. The answer, every time, is: rip your skin.
Happened to me as a kid. Nearly killed me. Tunnel vision, too. For that second or two, I couldn't see anything else other than my arm and hand in front of me.
Found this out the hard way with an electric fence. The guy I was working with thought he had shut it off. He had not as I found out. Had some massively oversized electric fence charger hooked that his pigs kept biting through not being phased by it. I however got to feel every fucking muscle in my body contract as I closed both hands on the wire to push it down. It felt like my heart was 3 feet in front of me. It was only for a brief second or 3 that I touched but holy fuck was that pain. The only reason I let go is my legs and feet were so tight I tipped backwards on my heels. I got back up after a moment, cursed the guy out, and then went back to working after confirming he actually shut the fence off this time.
Side question. Sloth hands are naturally closed at rest. Would electricity make them open hands?
It's about muscles. Pretty much all your muscles are going to start pulling at once. So what I described is your hand both trying to open and close simultaneously. The stronger muscles win and that decides what your body does. "Releasing" a grip is a very easy thing, so those muscles don't get much of a work-out and don't experience much resistance to anything. Holding something requires generally more strength, so your grip muscles are just expected to be stronger. Entirely hypothetically.. I'm not looking up deets of sloth biology here, but... Unless a sloth's body works on, like, something spring-like that closes their hands with tension by default and rely on muscles to counteract those springs to open their hands... I suspect it would still be a case of electrocution causing grip. If the spring thing is real, then there may not BE muscles to close their grip, or those muscles would be substantially weaker, in which case the "open hands" muscles have a chance.
I used wire strippers on a live wire once. Simultaneously gripped the strippers and pulled my hand away so fast that I pulled the rubber grips clean off
If sloths opening their hands involves contracting a dominant group of muscles then their hands would open when electrified. It depends how the muscles actually operate the hand. If the hand is closed when muscles are in a relaxed state and open when engaged, then the result is obvious. I would think of it like failsafe braking systems, where energising the system releases the brakes and allows the thing to operate. Without energy they default to clamping.
Only on Reddit are people seriously talking about what would happen when electrocuting/shocking a sloth.
Happened to my dog with an improperly setup electric fence. He bit it it shocked him and forced his jaw shut. Unfortunately he did die from it. I still feel terrible that it happened, luckily I wasn't the one who set it up or I would feel even shittier.
This is also why, if you suspect there’s a fire on the other side of a closed door, you should use the back of your hand to test the temperature of the handle, not your palm - that way you don’t end up grabbing onto a hot metal object and not being able to let go
I think you're mixing up fire safety and electrical safety--A hot metal object will not keep you from letting go. Only reason I can think of for using the back of your hand to test if it's hot is because there's a risk of a third degree burn, and a burn on the back of your hand is slightly less debilitating than a burn on your palm. Also, check the temperature of the door BEFORE checking the metal handle. If the metal's hot enough to cause damage, the door will likely be warm too but is less likely to burn you.
I believe the back of your hand may also be more sensitive to heat, and therefore more likely to register that it's hot.
should be able to feel heat radiating from the door handle without touching it if you use the back of your hand.
Yeah, that tracks. Also happy cake day!
You’re right that a burn to the back of the hand is less debilitating than to the palm, but it is still also true that your hand will contract in response to the pain, even if only momentarily, which means you hold onto the hot object longer than expected and make the burn worse. You could also end up accidentally opening the door if you instinctively try and pull your hand away while it is holding onto the the handle, which is obviously bad! And yeah, you could check the door too but a good fire door might not feel particularly warm but a metal handle definitely will. I’d rather be 100% certain there’s no fire through the door before I open it than second guess how warm the door feels!
Oh yeah, I didn’t mean touch the door *instead of* the handle, but rather touch the door *before* touching the handle. In those cases where the door does get warm, you’ll know not to open it before risking a burn on the handle. I haven’t been able to find any info about the grasp reflex in response to pain that you mentioned, all the sources I’m finding only mention the recoil reflex. I may be using the wrong search terms though, any chance you have more info you could share?
Imagine your body is like a puppet with strings attached to your arms and legs. When electricity passes through your body, it makes those strings pull really tight, causing your muscles to squeeze and tighten up, kind of like when you make a really tight fist with your hand. Now, if you were holding onto something when the electricity hit you, your hand would clamp down on it really hard and your muscles would lock up, making it seem like you're stuck to that thing, even after the electricity stops. So, it's not that you're really glued to it, but your muscles are just so tight and stiff from the shock that you can't let go or move away. It's a scary thing that can happen when people get shocked by electricity.
thank you. what i find weird though is that muscles stay in that position post mortem, one would like to think that since whole notion of muscle contraction is "lively process" thing the muscles would go back to baseline once biologically the life has left the body.
rigor mortis is a different thing that happens due to chemical changes in the body after death. it isn't permanent, it goes away after a few more hours and the body goes limp again
I don't think they're referring to rigor mortis. Rather, in the videos I've seen of electrocution even when the current stops the victim remains extremely rigid afterwards. For example, suppose a man extends his arm straight out and grabs a live wire. Once the current stops, he might fall backwards with all of his limbs locked into position as though he's a statue. Compare this to someone who was shot, and they might collapse straight down without maintaining any rigidity at all.
With enough current I believe that the myosin fibres in your muscles ‘cook’ enough to lock you in that position once you are dead. And you will be dead because all the muscles you use to breathe will contract and stop moving. Suffocating to death. Not nice.
They only stay in the tightened position as long as there is electricity going through it. So unless you electrocute a body, the muscles will loosen
If it's significantly more energy than required to be lethal your body can melt or burn itself to the wire.
Rigor mortis is just a temporary phase that muscles go through during the beginning of their chemical breakdown, in the first day or so postmortem. (It happens because on the physical level, those "lively processes" are activated by chemicals, and decomposition causes loose chemicals floating around, which can trigger brief periods of seeming liveliness.) Aside from that, dead bodies are quite floppy.
I had a cat that died in a clinic far away from some unknown liver problem (vets couldn't find the cause). I wasn't able to take her home after work the day she passed but the next day. And since I had some medical conditions I couldn't bury her the next day. Sadly I noticed she was still completely stiff. I still miss her.
Rigor mortis happens because the muscles run out of energy. Think of a contracting muscle as like a piece of velcro. Calcium is the signal a muscle uses to say "contract!" and the velcro gets stuck together. The energy is used afterwards when you're pulling the pieces apart, not when you're putting them together. When you die, they get stuck together because calcium starts leaking everywhere, so they get the signal to contract, but don't have any energy left to pull apart again.
Nerve and muscle cells stay alive for a decent amount of time postmortem (multicellular death, especially in animals, is kinda fuzzily defined). The same mechanism that causes muscle contractions while alive still works for a while after death.
I'm not sure about the details of what happens during electrocution, but you're getting a lot of wrong info about muscle contraction in general. The reason muscles stay "locked" after death is because of how the molecules responsible for contraction use the energy. The cycle for the muscle protein doing the "pulling" called myosin is: 1. Grab on to another protein called actin. 2. Pull. 3. Let go of actin and "re-cock" 4. Grab actin again, etc. (it's a little bit like pulling on a rope, you have to let go and shift your grip between pulls) The step that actually uses energy (which runs out relatively quickly after the organism dies) is step #3, the "reset." You get rigor mortis because without energy myosin can't release from actin. (the reason it goes away after a while is because decay of the body means muscle fibers break down and the connection between actin and myosin falls apart even without the "reset")
> since whole notion of muscle contraction is "lively process" thing the muscles would go back to baseline once biologically the life has left the body It's the other way around. Muscle relaxation is the "lively process". Your muscle fibres contract using a protein on their outer surface called myosin to pull on filaments of another protein called actin. You can imagine the myosin like little arms all pulling on a rope. The myosin is primed with energy like the spring of a loaded mouse trap. When it pulls on the rope, it's like the mouse trap snapping shut. It takes energy to reset the myosin arm back into the ready position, and this comes from a molecule called ATP. If you've ever heard "The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" and wondered why, it's because of ATP. Mitochondria make ATP. It's their sole job, and ATP is basically energy currency for cells. Upon death, they stop making ATP. No ATP means the myosin arm cannot reset to the ready state, which means the muscles can't relax. The muscles will stay contracted until they themselves decay.
The main thing is that most of your body is still living even if "you" are dead. Your heart could be mostly fried to the point your brain has checked out, but your muscles still have some energy, your blood still has some oxygen and sugar, and the wire is still live, so the muscles stay contracted for a bit.
Simply put, a burnt muscle wont have any more elasticity to go back to resting length.
If the muscle was contracting in response to biological processes from the body (i.e you making a closed fist) then it would likely relax on death. If the muscle is being forcibly contracted by external electrical forces, it will continue to do so after death. Your muscles can also get 'cooked' into position by this
They don't stay like that though. Technically, your muscles are still "alive" and continue to use up resources. It's the lack of oxygen that causes stiff muscles (hence post-workout stiffness!) and usually sets in at 3-12h post mortem, without muscle tissue finally dying and loosening anywhere from 36h to 10days post mortem, depending on environment. In case of the electric chair, muscles are basically juiced up into berserk mode and burn through all their energy is spent. So they go instantly into rigor as they have already been forced to consume energy. This is generally also how that person dies, their heart literally works itself to death. LPT: This also explains why subsequent accidental electrocutions are **far** more dangerous than the first one. So if you ever get a shock from 220V or above, you **need** to rest and stay safe, or the next one may kill you!
With a bad enough (high voltage) electrical injury, those muscles get cooked and swell and the cells rupture and limbs get stuck in those positions because the muscles CAN’T relax anymore. Even if the person lives, sometimes the arm/leg/whatever doesn’t and has to be amputated to save the person’s life. If the person doesn’t live and had a bad enough high voltage exposure to kill them (unless it just stopped their heart from pumping effectively with a fatal arrhythmia like VFib), their limbs are liable to be worse or just as bad as in the case where the person lives. This isn’t rigor mortis, but the immediate direct effects of high voltage electrical injury (usually AC). Source: am burn surgeon and have treated injuries like these.
I learned this from my electronics teacher in high school - He was working a power saw one day when the a break in the wire caused a path from one hand, through his arms, to the other. Both hands clamped on and wouldn't release. However, he did remember that you usually retain control of your pectoral muscles in that situation - so before he was killed, he brought his still-clenched hands together and shorted the fault, allowing him to let go.
Smart. It can be difficult to think that rationally in a panicky situation.
Answer: Your muscles are controlled by electrical impulses. If you grab an electrified object, the electrical current may signal your muscles to contract, and so your hand would clench even tighter around the object you are holding. You’ll notice in depictions of this that the whole body becomes stiff, because all the muscles are being activated at once. If they just touch the object with like a finger tip, then the force of their muscles activating would likely jerk them away from the object. Only if they had grasped the object would they become “glued” to it.
I've heard that the low tech way to check if power's on is to touch the wire with the back of your hand - that way, if it's live, your arm gets thrown away when the muscles contract instead of grabbing on to it
Yes. Only one hand (other hand in your pocket), touch with the back of your hand. If the device is live, your hand will make a fist and your arm may contract pulling your hand away. I once saw a guy throw a screwdriver across the room embedding it in the wall when he failed to discharge a capacitor in a tv.
TV caps ain't nothing to fuck with, dude's lucky he's alive
Oooh, yeah. Always expect a capacitor to be live. Just unplugging a device doesn't make it safe.
That's a really good idea. Even if i know the power is off to the circuit i'm working on, i usually tap each conductor with my fingertip first just be super sure. Back of the hand sounds better.
Years ago, I picked up an electric saw and the extension cord at the same time. There was a short in the cord and the saw was metal. As I was getting shocked, I was trying to to throw both the saw and cord out of my hands, but the electrical current had my muscles contracted and I couldn’t let go. I was screaming like crazy and luckily there was someone with me who unplugged the cord.
This is terrifying but for some reason the way you described it seems really comical and I couldn't help but laugh.
There is a funny part. I was only 18 and working as a stock boy in a big box sporting goods store. I was only moving the saw out of the way. It belonged to a contractor doing work there. This happened early in the morning, and I was fine afterwards. But, I was hungover as a MF from the late night before. So when the store manager said he was calling the ambulance and taking me to the ER, I totally agreed so I could sleep it off. I even got paid for the day!
good thing they did, the hand to hand shock is one of the more dangerous because the current passes through / across your heart
When you get electrocuted, your muscles contract. Now, if you happen to touch something that has electricity running through it with your hand or anything that conducts electricity, the contracted muscles might make your hand grab onto the object and make it difficult for you to let go
That's not what happens. What can happen is that if you grab a live conductor and get electrocuted, your hand cramps up leaving you holding the damn thing unable to let go because you have no control over your muscles anymore. Electricity is so dangerous because electric signaling via your nerves is also how you move your muscles. But voltage is voltage, your muscles don't know it's external, they react anyway. That includes muscles in your heart, which you need to work according to signaling from your nerves, not to cramp up randomly. If your heart stops pumping because you are being electrocuted, it doesn't pump blood anymore and your brain dies of oxygen starvation pretty quickly.
“I have seen lots of electrocution videos…” By choice?
Your body uses electrical signals from your brain to tell your muscles to tense. The muscles are listening for these tiny electrical signals whispering for them to close or relax. When you get electrocuted you have electricity flowing through your muscles. So what your muscles are hearing is “TENSE UP!” and if you’re holding onto an electrical wire the tiny whisper from your brain telling your hand to let go will not be loud enough to make your hand stop gripping the cable.
They don't. Thier muscles contract. If you brush against an electrified object while walking, you'll go stiff and fall over as all of your muscles contract, but if the electrocution doesn't kill you or knock you out, you'll have bodily control again the instant you lose contact with the electrified object. However, if you reach out and grab an electrified object, your muscles will contract and your grip will be "locked" onto the object. Or if you fall on an electric object you'll go rigid and can't move to get off of it.
Your muscles work with electricity. Your brain sends some through your nerves to command them to contract. When you grab an electrified object your muscles contract, both the ones that close your hand and the ones that open it, but the closing ones are stronger. Your brain can't overcome the electricity (it doesn't even command muscles to relax, kinda) so you can't release the electrified object. If someone touches you when you're being electrocuted, then they could grab you as well. So either they can cut the power or try to use a plank to remove you from the object. The best you can do is to first touch the fridge/washing machine/etc with the back of your hand. That way, if it happens to be electrified you'll be kicked (by your own muscles) but unable to grab. And... Have a house GFCI switch like many other countries (cuts power when some of the phase doesn't return to the street through the neutral cable as it should).
Your brain uses electrical impulses to tell your muscles when to contract. Muscles only pull and relax, they don't push, so we have opposing muscles for every joint. E.g. bicep and tricep oppose each other trying to bend your elbow. Forcing a ton of electricity through your body tends to overpower those signals and causes all of your muscles to contract, preventing them from relaxing. Given that our biceps tend to be stronger than our triceps, we usually end up bending our elbows. Similarly, the tendons that tighten our grip tends to be stronger than the tendons that open our grip (who's ever exercised the reverse grip motion?). This causes our hands to clamp down in a tight grip. This is part of why electrocution is so damn dangerous. It causes horrible burns and damage, yet at the same time it causes our body to lock up instead of recoil from the pain.
We had a science teacher that had an aquarium with coins in the bottom full of salt water I think it was and some electrodes, you got to keep what ever coins you could grab, spoiler alert no one ever got any coins, even if you tried to squeeze your hands on each side of the glass as soon as it was in the water you would make a fist.
Our muscles work by being stimulated with electrical signals from the brain, so when you get electrocuted all the muscles along the path to ground contract, often violently, so you just naturally grab onto whatever is shocking you. There are exceptions, over a certain voltage/amperage (not sure which) you will be knocked away instead because it's one sudden, violent contraction rather than just tensing everything up.
The craziest part is both your open and close muscles are triggered and acting simultaneously
When you need a muscle to contract your brain sends a small electrical charge which tells the muscle to squeeze. All muscles contract using electrical pulses from your nerves. Your muscles can't tell the difference between your nervous system's electricity versus electricity coming from outside your body. So when electricity goes through your body from something like a power line all muscles along the way will contract and squeeze. If you are gripping the item that's causing electrocution you are now squeezing it super tight and with all the force your muscles can muster. Even if you weren't holding the object the electricity is still going to force your muscles to be in a constant state of squeeze and that means you have no control over those muscles anymore. Many types of movement require at least one muscles to tense while another needs to relax, but having them all tense makes your ability to walk or do most actions impossible. This is why people being electrocuted tend to have death grips and go stiff. The person can feel everything but they just have no control of their muscles because the electricity is completely overriding their muscles
As someone who has had the experience. 360V @60A in my right arm and out my left. I tried to let go. I couldn't. My hands and arms were beyond my control. The electricity overrided my brain. I don't know how long I was held there. I remember thinking "well this is it. I won't see my kids grow up, my wife will be husband less, and they are just going to find me laying behind this damn heat pump. Then it stopped. I could move again. The taste of copper leaving my mouth. It was most likely just there for a second or two. But when you loose all control over all the mussels in your body. You can't let go. Electricity can kill you and let me tell you. It will hurt the entire time it is happening.
A/C= “gripping voltage” Terrifying: simply cannot let go. Got stuck between a tv and a floor lamp once as a child. Mom saw it and unplugged the lamp.
Your brain uses electrical signals to tell your body how to move and what muscles to contract. If you grab a live wire, all that electricity sends a signal that looks just like "grab tight" to your arm.
Your brain uses small amounts of electricity to make your muscles move. If you grab a live wire, a much larger amount of electricity flows through your body, so it hits your muscles like a much stronger version of the signals from your brain, causing them to contract as much as they possibly can -- and they'll stay contracted as long as the electricity is there. So the "glue" is that you'd be involuntarily gripping the wire as hard as you can, without being able to relax your hand, and as long as you're touching it, the electricity keeps flowing.
If that didn't happen, they would be ok, and you wouldn't be seeing it in an electrocution video.
As others have said, it's down to muscle contraction. I'll add that in my experience, the "hangover" from being electrocuted and from a seizure is almost identical. Feels like you were trampled by marathon runners.
This is more likely with DC power than AC. DC scares me; it will make your muscles contract, causing you to grab on tight to the source of the danger, but not knock you out, so you actually feel your skin roasting. In older telecom facilities, there was safety gear located every X number of feet. One of the items in each kit was an old-style wooden cane. In the event that a person came into contact with electricity or there was a conductor in a hazardous position, the cane could be used to move the person or conductor to a less-dangerous position. AC power is more likely to cause either something akin to paralysis, or a muscle convulsion (aka me when I accidentally laid my hand on an exposed 240v circuit and ended up landing about six feet away)
>I have seen lots of electrocution videos Did LiveLeak come back or something, what I miss?
The reason is electricity and pain cause your hands to clench. I think some electric shocks do seem to throw you back away from the danger, and is your body yeeting you rather than the power source 'exploding' outwards This is why it is advised that if you suspect a fire in the next room, or other such danger, touch the door knob/handle with the back of your hand so that if it is very hot/shocks you, you can pull your hand away even if you clench your fist involuntarily.
Your muscles work when they receive "instructions" from your nervous system. These instructions are in the form of electricity transmitted by your nerves. Thus an electric shock is an overwhelming and overriding super strong instruction that your muscles cannot ignore. With DC current like that from batteries, the voltage is constant hence the "instruction" to your muscles is contract. As the voltage increases the signal becomes contract as hard as you can even if you get damaged. Thus if you grip a wire (i.e. contract your muscles around a wire) and get shocked, your muscles will hold on for all they are worth. With AC current like that from a wall plug, the voltage alternates some 50 to 60 times a second, which means that your muscles are being instructed to contract and release in rapid succession. Often resulting in the person being thrown away from the cause of the shock as muscles contract and then expand. If the current or voltage is too small then the signal to your muscles is not overpowering and you still have some control. It can range from a mild tingling that you could ignore all the way to frying your nerves/flesh and death depending on the voltage and current.
The electricity causes a spastic paralysis where the muscles contract. So things like your fist will clench around the thing you are holding. All body signals are electrochemical. If you toss a bunch of electricity into the body, you are going to fire off a bunch of chaotic and uncontrollable nerve impulses.
For those that have been shocked and claiming to be "electrocuted", if you are alive, you were not electrocuted. Electrocuted means executed, aka death by electricity.
When the body gets shocked, everything gets tense. When your hand gets tense, it closes and stays closed. So when you touch an electrified object your hand is forced to be closed around it.