A man was electrocuted by 69,000 volts of electricity after he tried to steal copper wire from an electrical substation near Bellmead on Friday.
Anderson said that he was told by a TXU employee at the scene that the man “never even knew what hit him” and was killed instantly. That was confirmed by TXU district manager Tony Flores, who said that the power lines that run in front of people’s houses – carrying either 7,200 or 14,000 volts – are more than potent enough to be lethal.
“It’s like a blast of fire going through you, essentially,” Flores said. Anderson said he was amazed at the man’s disregard of posted warning signs. “If you’re going to be stupid, you’d better be tough,” he said.
God striking down a stupid criminal in his tracks on Christmas Eve, now THAT’S a Christmas miracle!
Site admin:
If you expect to have some commentary on the blog, then it might be time to limit the number of posts that your contributors are putting in, maybe one per day, since you seem to have lots of new contributors. As is, everything from yesterday already scrolled off, and most of todays posts are just plain silly trivia.
The blog used to have plenty of quirqy techie trivia, now there’s lots of “Cat found wearing dead man’s pants” type of silly/uninteresting Enquirer rated stuff.
“most of todays posts are just plain silly trivia.”
Awake, don’t worry. We’ll be back to normal tomorrow. We promise!
I hate to rain your you xmas miracle parade, but I think this is a solid case for evolution. He clearly lacked the intelligence to survive these modern times. Those that remain will live on and reproduce.
a 6 volt truck battery can snuff the life out of you just dandy.
Agreed.
When I was in the Navy, they had a big flap when a guy playing with a multimeter – measuring body resistance – was killed by the 9-volt battery in the meter.
The sharp tips of the probes had accidentally puntured the skin on two fingers – one on each hand – and the extremely-low resistance path thru his body let even a small battery produce enough amps to mess with his heart-beat (especially when it is a direct path through the chest, like his was).
There were all kinds of safety notices and training, and the obligatory (young guys in the military) jokes about what an idiot the guy must have been, to be killed my a volt-meter. 🙁
it’s true that amps is what kills, but volts at certain extreme levels can kill. btw…high voltages doesn’t feel like “a tingling sensation”. that’s why tasers are used by the police to restrain individuals, which ocassionaly can even cause death in freak accidents. i’ve been shocked with a taser, and trust me, it definitly doesn’t feel like a tingling sensation. of course, this only occurs when the voltages are extremely high. i have no doubt though that the idiot in this story was killed by the amps, which were obviously not “dumbed down” in that substation like it would be in a taser.
Steve, god? Come on, ask John; he’d be more logical than that. I don’t see why you have to invoke a non-provable mythos to explain how a man got electrocuted, just because he was too stupid to take safety precautions.
Sigh, I wish John was the only one writing on here, and perhaps Eidard.
What you people don’t know about electricity is shocking
He’s not stupid. He just made a fatal mistake.
I’m the one who encouraged semi-wacky posts about CHristmas…so this is the result..after the holidays things will calm down. As for over-posting, the readership on holidays is always down — over posting actually keeps it porpped up a little, at least by the way I see the stats…so I’m not complaining about it to anyone, That said you can be sure that after Jan 1 things will be back to normal although some site redesigns are needed.
It’s almost commonplace that people who work on boats when wety with saltwater will get hurt. It’s easy to rest your arm such that it gets both sides of the battery – and it hurts.
He had two friends with him. Apparently he said something like “…hey guys, watch this”
To site admin – why not just make the active page on the blog longer and last longer? Is there a technical problem?
I agree with mike cannali. Make the active page longer so it stays up a little longer. Sometimes a really good dialog is going and the article drops off.
But the trivial stuff? Mix it up, I enjoy the light stuff too. I also enjoy John travel pictures.
Electronics Engineering student chiming in to tell you so called experts that you’re severely mistaken.
Amperage need only be a few milliamps to kill you, around 30 if I recall, although that might not be quite right it’s definatly far less than one amp.
Voltage however needs to be quite high in order to overcome the resistance of the human body, a 6 volt truck battery will NOT kill you, 6 volt ANYTHING cannot kill you. I’ve heard figures of around 70 or 80 volts being the minimum to affect your internal organs – however, voltage can still be quite a bit higher than this and not kill you; if for example you’re wearing shoes, gloves, etc – I personally have been shocked by a 100 volt, 100 amp welding arc and not suffered any ill effect asside from a surface burn.
Think of voltage as the force that pushes the electrons round the circuit, like the PSI of a liquid being pushed through a hose – think of amperage as the amount of electrons travelling through the circuit or the volume of liquid through a hose. You could have all the water in the world squirt at your chest, but if it’s only squirting at 0.3 PSI it’s not going to hurt you – this is analogous to a high amperage/low voltage circuit.
May be his intesion in some other side and he got electouced.