Well the key is where you take the shock. It only takes a surprisingly small
current across the chest to kill you merely by stopping your heart, that is
why the one hand in your pocket advice is so useful.
Lots of us have had shocks, mine were usually thru the fingers of the same
hand when delving inside a working piece of valve gear that had series fed
heaters across the mains.
Yes you get some expletives but not much else. The buzzing bruised feeling
soon passes.

Remember in the past some dodgy practitioners thought shocks were actually
therapeutic, How they did not manage to kill most of their patients is
amazing. I'm also sure as kids we all made electric shock machines All you
needed was a small mains transformer a battery and something like a
mechanical buzzer. You wired the buzzer and secondary in series with the
battery and a switch, and asked your victim to hold the ends of the
primary.
I guess current was quite low, but when bridge rectifiers and small high
voltage capacitors came along you could end up with something really
dangerous. What we used to do was charge up a capacitor and leave it on a
young ladies seat and watch what happened when she picked it up, Ahem, Well
it was fun at the time...
Brian

--

This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"soup" wrote in message
...
Many have had a 'belt' from domestic 240Volt wiring through bad luck, bad
judgment or plain stupidity .
Whilst a shock from 240V CAN kill how often does that actually happen
and how many just get thrown across the room into a foetal position
whimpering and crying until the arm unknots and the tingling feeling goes
away.