6 ms·

Japan runs at 100V, the lowest and therefore safest voltage in the world. 100V, 240V, if 15 amps runs through you, you’re having a really bad day either way. T

Japan runs at 100V, the lowest and therefore safest voltage in the world. 100V, 240V, if 15 amps runs through you, you’re having a really bad day either way. That’s another way of saying, “it ain’t the volts, it’s the amperage.”

throw0101a 7y ago
It also depends on path of travel: hand to foot, probably not too bad. Across your chest / heart: probably worse.
Lio 7y ago
I was always taught “volts jolt; mills kill”. i.e. high voltage will knock you across the room but a few milliamps of current across the heart will easily kill you. A 12V car battery can kill if you’re not careful.
- askvictor 7y ago
  But voltage is what matters to pass through the skin. 12v can kill if it's applied below the skin into the highly conductive inside of the body. But to get through skin you need at least 30v.
- eemil 7y ago
  So much misinformation in this thread. Voltage, current, and resistance are physical properties entirely dependent on each other -- increasing one affects the value of others. That's like saying that the mass of bullets kills people, without any regard for velocity. A 12 V car battery can kill you, if it has a low-resistance path that goes through your heart. Touching the terminals will do nothing. Maybe if you applied that voltage to conductive spikes inserted into specific points of the body, there would be some effect. A voltage source, like a car battery, does not determine how much current passes through a circuit. That is determined by the circuit's resistance, and the source's upper limits (i.e. internal resistance for batteries, rated current for power supplies). As voltage increases, so does current. High-voltage supplies will absolutely kill you, as long as they're able to supply the required current. Which, to harm a human heart, is quite low (tens to hundreds of milliamps). Aside from fringe sources like static electricity and tasers, most HV sources are entirely capable.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Path (through the body) and frequency also matter. See generally: https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/JackHsu.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/JackHsu.shtml I recall a story, late 1990's to early oughts, of a solo researcher found dead in his lab of apparent heart failure whilst working with very low voltage- and amperage currents, but at critical frequencies. I cannot find an online reference presently.
nwallin 7y ago
I = V/R So given relatively constant resistance, voltage is linearly proportional to amperage. Double the volts, double the amps. The resistance of the human body can vary, for instance, if you're sweating, your resistance drops, therefore the amperage increases. Dry skin has high resistance, so if you stab electrodes through your skin and into your flesh, the low resistance of your mostly salt water body will carry a high amperage. But with all environmental factors being equal, if one person gets zapped by 100V and another person gets zapped by 240V, the person zapped by 240V will have 2.4x the amps running through them, and their day will be roughly 2.4x worse. In other words, sure, guns don't kill people, bullets kill people. But you'll find that whenever a bullet kills sometime, there was probably a gun involved.
Itsdijital 7y ago
Voltage always kills. It's always voltage. Amps are a side effect of the thing that is killing you - volts. The only time a voltage sufficient enough to kill you, doest kill you, is when it is only present for an extremely small amount of time and/or not traversing your heart.
- kube-system 7y ago
  > The only time a voltage sufficient enough to kill you, doest kill you, is when it is only present for an extremely small amount of time and/or not traversing your heart. The reason this is the case is because your initial premise is incorrect. Power kills you. Power equals work divided by time. This is why huge voltages over short periods of time don’t kill you.

throw0101a 7y ago

It also depends on path of travel: hand to foot, probably not too bad. Across your chest / heart: probably worse.

Lio 7y ago

I was always taught “volts jolt; mills kill”. i.e. high voltage will knock you across the room but a few milliamps of current across the heart will easily kill you. A 12V car battery can kill if you’re not careful.

askvictor 7y ago
But voltage is what matters to pass through the skin. 12v can kill if it's applied below the skin into the highly conductive inside of the body. But to get through skin you need at least 30v.
eemil 7y ago
So much misinformation in this thread. Voltage, current, and resistance are physical properties entirely dependent on each other -- increasing one affects the value of others. That's like saying that the mass of bullets kills people, without any regard for velocity. A 12 V car battery can kill you, if it has a low-resistance path that goes through your heart. Touching the terminals will do nothing. Maybe if you applied that voltage to conductive spikes inserted into specific points of the body, there would be some effect. A voltage source, like a car battery, does not determine how much current passes through a circuit. That is determined by the circuit's resistance, and the source's upper limits (i.e. internal resistance for batteries, rated current for power supplies). As voltage increases, so does current. High-voltage supplies will absolutely kill you, as long as they're able to supply the required current. Which, to harm a human heart, is quite low (tens to hundreds of milliamps). Aside from fringe sources like static electricity and tasers, most HV sources are entirely capable.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Path (through the body) and frequency also matter. See generally: https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/JackHsu.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/JackHsu.shtml I recall a story, late 1990's to early oughts, of a solo researcher found dead in his lab of apparent heart failure whilst working with very low voltage- and amperage currents, but at critical frequencies. I cannot find an online reference presently.

nwallin 7y ago

I = V/R So given relatively constant resistance, voltage is linearly proportional to amperage. Double the volts, double the amps. The resistance of the human body can vary, for instance, if you're sweating, your resistance drops, therefore the amperage increases. Dry skin has high resistance, so if you stab electrodes through your skin and into your flesh, the low resistance of your mostly salt water body will carry a high amperage. But with all environmental factors being equal, if one person gets zapped by 100V and another person gets zapped by 240V, the person zapped by 240V will have 2.4x the amps running through them, and their day will be roughly 2.4x worse. In other words, sure, guns don't kill people, bullets kill people. But you'll find that whenever a bullet kills sometime, there was probably a gun involved.

Itsdijital 7y ago

Voltage always kills. It's always voltage. Amps are a side effect of the thing that is killing you - volts. The only time a voltage sufficient enough to kill you, doest kill you, is when it is only present for an extremely small amount of time and/or not traversing your heart.

kube-system 7y ago
> The only time a voltage sufficient enough to kill you, doest kill you, is when it is only present for an extremely small amount of time and/or not traversing your heart. The reason this is the case is because your initial premise is incorrect. Power kills you. Power equals work divided by time. This is why huge voltages over short periods of time don’t kill you.