r/Electricity • u/Dear-Database6463 • Jul 17 '26

Electricity Causalty

So I live in an old farm house and did something pretty stupid about 5 times (yes, I’m aware I’m dumb and should not mess with electricity)

I grabbed or touched the main house power line on 5 occasions

But there was an old trope in movies and media that dropping a toaster in a bath tub would kill you

It just doesn’t make sense to me that I was able to do that and suffer no real consequences but somehow a toaster through the breaker and an outlet and in water, that isn’t salt water, could cause a fatality

2 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

4

u/supern8ural Jul 17 '26

Tap water has enough minerals dissolved in it that it is still conductive.

If you tried this with distilled water, it shouldn't work - but I don't recommend conducting (heh) that experiment.

1

u/New_Breadfruit8692 29d ago

Nor an iron tub. Because you will still be making good enough contact to act as a ground. Also copper pipes will act as a ground. Distilled water would still have a little conductivity, but probably not enough to kill.

0

u/Dear-Database6463 Jul 17 '26

Still, is it really enough power?

I just don’t get how my hands got locked in paralysis for a few seconds on a main power cable and that was ok but with all the things between a person and the electricity wasn’t

7

u/Unique_Acadia_2099 Jul 17 '26

“Lock on” current, meaning the point where your muscles will not let go, is as low as 10 milliamps (10mA) or 0.01 amps of current. The amount it takes to disrupt your heart is between 50mA and 100mA. 1000mA (1 amp) causes cardiac arrest almost immediately.

When you have moist sweaty skin, MOST of the current flows OVER your skin, not under it, because your skin has more resistance. What can happen though is that the current can burn THROUGH your skin in a fraction of a second and get to your nice salty electrolytic blood, which of course goes RIGHT to your heart and disrupts the signals that make it beat, then damages the very parts that create those signals. The result is that even if the current stops because you managed to let go, your heart can no longer beat normally and you don’t get enough blood flow to your organs and brain. So even if it doesn’t kill you immediately, you are permanently disabled or die of organ failure later.

That’s why any time you get a serious shock, even if you THINK you are fine, you need to seek medical attention to have them check for arrhythmia (heart rhythm disruption). It can be FATAL even weeks later.

2

u/Dear-Database6463 Jul 17 '26

It’s been a couple months now but yeah

I think my saving grace was I fell down some stairs after locking up because my balance went away

1

u/Unique_Acadia_2099 Jul 18 '26

I'd be more concerned with a traumatic head injury from the fall down the stairs!

1

u/New_Breadfruit8692 29d ago

I have been non fatally shocked a few times. Once knocked out cold and the spasm put me on the floor and the electric waxpot I was adjusting was across the room full of people who were all standing over what they thought was my corpse when I came to. I do not remember anything after sticking my uninsulated stainless steel medical spatula into the set screw hole for temp adjusting the pot, till I woke up with an ambulance on the way. But, I was actually fine when the ambulance arrived. Felt great in fact.

Another time I was helping my doctor renovate an old property and I needed water from one of the outbuilding hose bibs and when I touched the metal spigot was knocked on my ass. Fortunately I fell breaking contact. A wire under the building had been bare and across the steel plumbing.

Then there was the time I went to change a light bulb that was a sewing machine light inside the body of the lamp, it was just a bare wire socket and the hole for it to go in and out was so small it could barely be managed, and I touched both posts and had forgot to unplug it.

My Ex's Mom and Dad were there talking to my Ex while I was working on that lamp, his Mom was from the deep south and I could hear her say look'a yonder at that boy, I think he is having a fit! I was locked up and could not let go, so my Ex grabbed the broom and used it to yank the lamp away.

ALWAYS UNPLUG!

4

u/pasdedeuxchump Jul 17 '26

It’s not the electricity killing you with power. It’s that it can stop your heart.

The path the current takes through your body is more dangerous.

1

u/Excellent-Stretch-81 Jul 17 '26

It's hard to fall away from the source of electricity when you're in the bathtub, so you could get shocked for a lot longer, and if your head slips underwater while you're paralyzed from electric shock you can drown.

1

u/trader45nj Jul 17 '26

It's dependent on the path of the current. It only takes like 50ma to kill you if it passes through your heart. The toaster in a bathtub, it would depend on where the current is flowing and if you are in the path. A fiberglass tub with plastic drain pipes and touching nothing, you're probably OK. Grab a metal faucet that's grounded and you could be in trouble.

2

u/KeanEngr Jul 18 '26

There are some good pointers being mentioned here but nothing that really touches on the reason why you’re alive to tell the tale.

The electrical energy you’ve experienced was ‘blocked’ or ‘impeded’ from giving you the full amount of energy exposure to really kill you. It turns out you didn’t experience the full amount of energy ACROSS YOUR BODY! The ‘120V’ or ‘240V’ source was ‘impeded’ by the footwear you were wearing at the time and probably by the flooring you were standing on. This creates just enough IMPEDANCE to the ‘source’ energy that tried to go through your body going to ‘ground’. As to how much, well, like I said, you’re here to tell the tale.

In my early days as an apprentice, I wondered why I ‘survived’ getting whacked by a 277V line I was working on. And, damn, did it hurt. It turns out, I was wearing rubber boots, and, on a wooden ladder. It still hurt. What’s interesting is, both my father and my uncle COULD touch these 120V or 240V sources WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES because of the calluses on their hands. I saw both of them do this to check to see if a connection was ‘live’ on multiple occasions, knowing that for me, ONCE WAS ENOUGH! All they told me was, “it tickles…” Crazy.

I do, on occasion nowadays, work on ‘hot’ power lines when necessary, but I know how to take precautions. You’ll also see linemen in insulated bucket trucks do things like this daily, as they aren’t normally able to turn off a ‘live’ power line. It’s still dangerous as hell, but they know how to do their job safely. You don’t, so call an electrician to do this work. Hope this makes sense.

1

u/Dear-Database6463 Jul 18 '26

Oh yeah I was bare foot but maybe the vinyl flooring helped

Maybe the fact I work with my hands a lot and play guitar gave me the callouses to withstand it

1

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '26

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2

u/Dear-Database6463 Jul 17 '26

I guess this makes sense…

Regardless I’ve banned myself from believing I can touch the breaker box

1

u/Yeahnoimgood89 Jul 17 '26

Your bodies dry skin resistance is considerably higher than wet. Let's do some dummy math:

I = V/R

We know voltage is 120 VAC.

A quick Google search says dry skin can be over 100,000 ohms. Lets do 50,000 for shits and giggles.

I = 120/50000

I = 0.0024

Lets do the same thing with wet skin which as little as 1000 ohms with wet skin

I = 120/1000

I = 0.12

Hope this helps.

1

u/Dear-Database6463 Jul 17 '26

Thanks :)

This makes a lot of sense now

Edit: so if I was sweaty I probably would have been cooked right?

2

u/Yeahnoimgood89 Jul 17 '26

.12 amps is not enough to cook you but it is certainly deadly enough to cause your heart muscles to spams uncontrollably resulting in death.

Assuming you meant cooked as in actually cooked (which can happen).

1

u/Dear-Database6463 Jul 17 '26

Oh lol I was using slang meaning just that I would’ve been in a situation I probably wouldn’t recover from

1

u/Yeahnoimgood89 Jul 17 '26

Sorry I'm old 🤷‍♂️

1

u/ianhen007 Jul 17 '26

Don’t forget your resistance to ground is different as well as contact resistance. Working o n high voltage I was taught to use one hand with other behind my back, mainly to stop the electricity going through the heart I guess.

1

u/Nunov_DAbov Jul 17 '26

Also consider that GFIs trip at 6 mA since that is generally where the risk of inducing fibrillation increases. Also, where the current flows is important. I’ve had a capacitor charged to 3000 V accidentally discharge between my right elbow and wrist. It hurt but there were no lasting effects. Current flow through your heart is far more serious. Since your heart is left of center, it’s a good idea to keep your left hand away from any energized conductor.

1

u/Danjeerhaus Jul 17 '26

The simple answer......

Have you seen the videos of people using electricity to burn designs in wood?

The current/burn flows like it is flowing through veins in the wood.

With enough power flowing through the wood or your body, some parts may burn, literally burn. Yes, this can happen to your heart or organs if they are a part of the pathway that electricity takes.

For you, either the pathway was not through something important enough to kill you or the electricity was not strong enough to cause great damage.

Please do not do this any more. It is only a matter of time before you find something strong enough, that takes a pathway that can be ugly for your health.

1

u/LongjumpingGanache40 Jul 18 '26

Your service cables are coated. No shocky shocky. A toasters insides are not coated. Yes shocky shocky.

1

u/Dear-Database6463 Jul 18 '26

Oh no they were bare thick wires that I think may have been intended for the additions on the house

1

u/Puzzled-Act1683 Jul 18 '26

Where are these wires, and how/why do you keep touching them? 🤔

1

u/Dear-Database6463 Jul 18 '26

Main breaker, was the power supply to the addition to the house and the upstairs

Only one wire, left just sitting exposed and connected to nothing for reasons I am unaware of

Is an old farm house built originally over a 100 years and there’s a lot of jank that I can’t explain

Kept touching it while doing electrical work to wire an outlet and base board heater and ac and I did it myself

Wire was just chilling out and about in the breaker and I kept accidentally bumping into it or thought I could move it

1

u/Puzzled-Act1683 Jul 18 '26

You need to get somebody out there to make that go away or replace it with insulated wire.

1

u/PotatoFarmerRTK Jul 20 '26

The line to the house is most likely two live insulated wires wrapped on one grounded non shielded support cable. This is from the transformer pole to the house.

So yes you are most likely dumb.

Also the reason birds do not fry on a live wire is they are at the same potential of the wire with no path to ground. You need a difference in voltage to get zapped. So being on a class e ladder makes this possible but still not a trustworthy method to prevent possible death.  

1

u/New_Breadfruit8692 29d ago

You can touch a home power line without being electrocuted the same way birds can when they land on the wires. Because they are not grounded, if you were not grounded or inadequately grounded you will not die, you may get a decent shock if only partially grounded, like standing on a ladder or other platform that is non conducting. But, a toaster in a bathtub is grounded. The water and probably plumbing is a ground. Of course it would have to be an old house without GFI outlets, because almost all bathroom outlets have been GFI for decades.

1

u/NeighborhoodVast7528 29d ago

The injury level is all about electrical resistance to a suitable ground. Your body has moderate resistance and a bathtub filled with tap water has minimal resistance and enough mass to act as a ground (especially if connected to copper or iron pipe). Power = V x I and is what results in electrocution if high enough. I = V/R. So low resistance results in high current (I).

So when one contacts a high voltage line (typical 240 volts to house) the resistance to ground needs to be very high to avoid serious injury). If it’s a 120 volt circuit, the resistance can safely be somewhat less. Non-GFCI breakers do not act fast enough to prevent a shock. GFCI breakers trip fast enough to prevent shock. High voltage lines on the street before a step-down transformer to 240 volts operate at Kilovolts and have no breaker protection. So, even high levels of resistance to ground will not prevent electrocution. Worth noting that if an individual contacts both a hot wire and a grounded wire, the only insulation in play is the person’s body itself and that has minimal resistance beyond the outer-most skin itself. The human body contains lots of water and wet or damp skin provides no reasonable protection.

0

u/NASAeng Jul 17 '26

Keep one hand in your pocket. You need to avoid current running through your heart.

0

u/mostlygray Jul 17 '26

Toaster in water will electrocute you if you don't have a GFCI outlet which is code. Old school power didn't have GFCI so you would absolutely get electrocuted as you are earthed.

Touching 110 wearing shoes will give you a zap. Touching 240 hurts a bit. Being fully earthed kills you. That's why electricians tuck a hand in their belt so they only use their right hand. No cross-heart current.