"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Thu, 3 Sep 2015 13:21:23 +0100, NY wrote:

And then apply various levels of "extra high", "super high", "extremely
high" adjectives beyond that! 650 V from a third rail would give you
very nasty burns and probably kill you. And 25 kV from overhead line
train electrification, or 11, 33, 275 or 400 kV from pylon wires, would
probably set you alight as well.

A 9 V battery has the capability to kill if well enough connected to
you.

"It's volts that jolts, mils that kills"

"mils" being short for milliampere.

I imagine that to be "well enough connected" it needs to be via open wounds
that penetrate the epidermis and maybe even dermis, and get right to muscle.

I wonder what voltage is used by internal paddle-defibrillators and other
"jump start" devices for restarting the heart in open-chest heart
operations. Probably not much compared with those that are applied to the
outside of the chest.

Apparently I had many Joules of the latter (as well as many mls of
adrenaline and many many chest compressions) when I suffered a heart attack
and cardiac arrest four years ago. I have no memory of it! But it did some
good because I'm still here and, despite my heart having no pulse for about
90 mins and CPR being the only "pulse" that my body had until A&E got me
going again, I suffered no (discernable) brain damage - but then would they
be able to tell? :-)

A woman I was at university with was able to "feel" voltages as low as a
couple of volts with her fingers and was much in demand for her
laying-on-of-hands technique in the lab for feeling circuit boards to tell
which tracks were live, as an alternative to using a voltmeter!