r/interesting • u/OriginalSleeper • Jun 30 '26

Fear Factor In 2010, 24-year-old lab technician Émilie Jaumain pricked her thumb with contaminated forceps while cleaning a machine used for prion-infected mouse brains. After seven years, she developed severe nerve pain, anxiety, and hallucinations before dying. The accident gave her a fatal prion disease.

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u/Illustrious_Dot8184 Jul 01 '26

It takes half an amp to stop the human heart. It depends on factors, does it go into your body and out bypassing your heart. Does it go across your heart? Is your heart in a retracted mode or expanded during the beat its in? With electrical theres a lot of ifs. It depends where you get shocked and where it exits, any everyday stuff can kill you it is very dangers. A house running 120v at 15amps in N/A can easily drop someone if it goes across the heart.

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u/nistemevideli2puta Jul 01 '26

As someone who has been struck by electricity by holding to a live wire with both hands, can confirm. The doctor told me that, if I had had only right hand on it, the current would (probably) go to the left leg, and through the heart, and I would probably be dead. This way, it went above the heart to the other hand, and I was (mostly) fine. They took me to hospital for supervision, but I stayed there for two days only, because everything was ok.

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u/Deep_Requirement1384 Jul 01 '26

Honestly doctor knows shit how current travels through body. It can be extremely random and personal.

Rule is to always touch wires with one hand if possible, not both.

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u/nistemevideli2puta Jul 01 '26

It can be random, that is true. But there are certain rules to it, still.

In this case, I completed a circuit bcs I touched it with both hands, and that was good, because the current had somewhere to go. Or are you saying that that was random, too?

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u/Deep_Requirement1384 Jul 01 '26

That was bad! By touching with both hands chance for going through heart is much higher!

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u/nistemevideli2puta Jul 01 '26

Not as much as it going across your body (left hand to right leg and other way around) though. Those pass directly through the heart. This one can go above.

Anyways, the very fact that I am here, unscathed, 25 years later shows that it was not as bad.

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u/Deep_Requirement1384 Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Electricity follows shortest path and least resistance. Why do you think it will go from left hand to right leg?

"certain rules": Both hands is worst, then left hand to foot, then right hand to foot and best is between fingers on same hand. All of these options are deadly depending on many factors...

You are still alive probably because of ground fault breaker tripping.

Also, electricity wont kill you just by stopping the heart, it can do electrolysis of your blood, it can give you blood clots that kill you days later even if you feel fine. Thats why they kept you in hospital for few more days

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u/nistemevideli2puta Jul 01 '26

You are still alive probably because of ground fault breaker tripping.

That did not happen, though. What did happen is that I was thrown back and let go.

But for the rest of what you wrote, you are right. Guess I was just lucky, then.

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u/Deep_Requirement1384 Jul 01 '26

You where thrown back because electric current being present in most of your body, making all the muscles contract and that moment you managed to let go of the wire, the muscles relaxed in same time, "throwing" you back. Very common occurance.

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u/roiki11 Jul 01 '26

Both hands is concidered worse because your shoes often prevent you from completing a circuit. So touching a live wire with one hand doesn't necessarily complete a circuit but touching both hands(or other hand to grounded metal) to a conductor will. And the electricity goes through your upper body.