14 ms·

One time, I was driving at night in the Sierra after a storm - roads were covered in snow. It's a drive I've made close to 100 times without incident. Going aro

• jjtheblunt 4y ago
  low amperage perhaps
  • iso1631 4y ago
    A lighting circuit will deliver plenty of amps if there's a low resistance path to ground.
    • tim333 4y ago
      Stone floor. Stones are not great conductors.
• bitexploder 4y ago
  Couple of thoughts: Probably just leaking voltage, so not a full circuit shock, that is my first guess. Also, even wet your skin has high-ish resistance. It also may have traveled on the outside of your body to ground, path of least resistance? I have been bit by 120 and 240. When it is a full load it hekkin hurts.
  • 13of40 4y ago
    Does it matter whether the light was switched on? It seems like the path of least resistance in that scenario would be the other copper wire leading out of the light socket rather than the high resistance person connecting to ground. I've had a similar experience, where (at the age of about 10) I touched an exposed 120v AC wire on a running water pump, while standing in a muddy field, and I only got a mild vibrating feeling from it.
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      > Does it matter whether the light was switched on? Depends on how it is wired. Sometimes lights are wired so that the switch comes before the fixture, sometimes after. One of several reasons you should always turn power off at the breaker when fiddling with the wiring, instead of assuming it won't be hot if the switch is off.
      • 13of40 4y ago
        No, I mean if the switch is closed... [hot wire]---[switch]---[load]---. | [neutral wire]-------------------+ | [person] | [ground] In this situation would the current "prefer" to go to neutral or to ground? Edit: Or this one... [neutral wire]---[load]---[switch]---. | [hot wire]---------------------------+ | [person] | [ground] ...where "load" is like a 20 watt LED bulb or something.
• SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  > You really can't do worse than standing barefoot, soaking wet, on a stone floor, and grabbing a live fixture, can you? Would the wetness have actually helped? Why go through all that higher resistance human flesh when the current can go straight to ground via the electrolyte solution that's around you instead?
  • Filligree 4y ago
    Only really the case if the available power is limited, so flowing around you means the voltage drops. Otherwise it'll just do both. That, and wet skin has (massively) lower resistance than dry skin. It's unlikely to work out for you. Skin is also hydrophobic. You're unlikely to have a complete circuit with no breaks on the outside of your body, unless you're currently standing in the shower.
    • pflanze 4y ago
      I'd expect blood to conduct electricity much better than house hold water, due to higher salt content. Thus once the resistance of the skin has dropped because of the water on the skin, the path of least resistance should be through the inside of the body.
• ealexhudson 4y ago
  I've done the whole "why is my arm vibrating thing" before, except in my case I was trying to get the end of a light fitting off, and both the hot and cold prongs were in my hand. Got a nice couple of blisters where they touched the skin. My guess would be not enough of the main current was passing across your heart to kill you? I didn't think mains electricity was necessary powerful enough to kill people in most scenarios, just that it is powerful enough to do it in an unlucky few. I'd also imagine the floor wasn't really conducting to earth.
• peepee1982 4y ago
  I've been shocked by 230 V light fixtures twice. Both times I had a very similar experience as you described. My guess is that it went only through the one hand, and the sensation in the arm is just a side effect.
• rootusrootus 4y ago
  Probably not the full voltage, just a leak. 230V is quite an experience. 120V is a mere annoyance by comparison, even if you touch live terminals directly. Even 120V is more than vibrating, though.
  • saalweachter 4y ago
    My received wisdom from prior generations was "120V will just tickle you, it's 240V you have to watch out for."
  • s1artibartfast 4y ago
    For context, a modern defibrillator is about 3,000 volts and 15 amps.
    • bonzini 4y ago
      It seems a bit too much, but in any case it's direct current. Compared to AC there's almost an order of magnitude difference.
      • Ygg2 4y ago
        It's not just AC vs DC, but frequency changes a lot. High frequency AC can be safe at 30000V can be safe at 10^6 Hz.
• newaccount74 4y ago
  I've accidentally touched live electricity (230V) several times, and from speaking to other people it's not a rare occurrence. I think you actually need to be pretty unlucky to die from an electric shock at home.
  • radlad 4y ago
    I've never been hit by 240V thankfully, but when I was a kid I felt 120V when plugging a computer into the wall.
  • agentwiggles 4y ago
    During an ill-advised electrical experiment in my youth, I discharged a big capacitor into my hand. Luckily I think the current just went into and then out of my thumb back into the circuit. Still, the resulting shock knocked me over and gave me a tangible and valuable lesson about caution around high currents!
  • jfk13 4y ago
    I can confirm that 230V is plenty to give you a serious jolt -- like, throw you a couple feet backwards from the thing you shouldn't have touched. I imagine it could've killed me if the connection hadn't been so rapidly broken. And that came from the "ground" pin of an outlet! Except that the building (in a third-world country that I'll leave unnamed here) hadn't been wired correctly, as I learned the hard way.
  • Tao3300 4y ago
    > I think you actually need to be pretty unlucky to die from an electric shock at home. Though if there's one thing we've learned from the article, there will be plenty of people waiting in the wings of the Intenet to sputter "Karma!" and "Darwin!" when you do. Aside, if you ever feel like saying that sort of thing, take an idea, principal, or religious icon that has a deep meaning to you, or in the latter case, someone whose work you think was influential and great. Fix that image in your mind, think "serves you right, asshole", and scream the word or the name out at the top of your lungs. Then reflect on how fucking stupid that was.
• vinceguidry 4y ago
  The path from your hands to feet doesn't go through your heart. Really that simple.
• ptaffs 4y ago
  i think to kill you either there needs to be enough power to burn organs, which still may only affect one limb and not be fatal, or to pass through your heart, say from one arm to another, or arm to opposite leg, and for your heart to be disrupted rather than just shocked. But the two aspects are the amount of power and the path the current takes. Maybe the floor tile was above a waterproof membrane, like a wet-room, and so inhibited the power current flow?
• citizenpaul 4y ago
  Nearly the same thing happened to me. Except instead of the car missing me my brain told me perhaps from tornado safety training in school? If I dropped into the narrow V shaped drainage ditch so the car would pass over me I would live. It did and I did. I can still remember the tire passing inches over my face in slow motion as the car flew into the trees. I was fine. The driver was some kid that stole their parents car. The kid seemed uninjured. The parents were I guess chasing them in another car as they arrived only a few seconds after the wreck.
  • Arrath 4y ago
    Holy shit, glad you're okay. That was quick thinking.
    • MrMan 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • citizenpaul 4y ago
        I guess you are mocking my near death experience? You must be a wonderful person. Allow me to even further your disbelief. Nearly the same thing happened to me again years later. Except the second time was a motorcycle. I narrowly sidestepped a motorcycle on a mountain road that had taken the turn too fast while I was looking over a marked "scenic viewpoint". The driver in this case though I do not know if they lived. As they did go over the side of the ravine into very rough rocks and ground. They were alive when Ambulance took them away though.
        • heavyset_go 4y ago
          Although I think you're right that they're mocking the OP, something similar saved my friend from serious injury/death. He saw a car barreling towards him as he was walking on the street, instinctually jumped up, rolled over the windshield and roof and landed safely, albeit not on his feet.
• kibwen 4y ago
  > Going around a bend, I saw a car in the ditch on the outside of the curve. I stopped the car, put on the hazards, and went to see if there was anyone in the car. As I was about to cross the highway a car come sliding around the bend more or less sideways. The lesson here is this: lightning strikes twice (frustratingly, the usual idiom is as wrong as can be). In other words, if you observe an outcome and have no other data whatsoever about the conditions that produced that outcome, it is safe to assume that the conditions continue to exist to allow the outcome to happen again. In this case, the existence of a car that has spun out around a curve is the clue that cars will continue to spin out along that curve.
  • j_mo 4y ago
    They teach Motorsport marshals in the UK to always keep the car that has come off-track between yourself and live traffic, and never turn your back to the track. Whatever caused the accident is just as likely to cause another car to go in, ie oil or coolant on track, or even debris from the current incident. Same applies on the roads I guess, especially in poor conditions.
    • rqtwteye 4y ago
      I was military police in Germany for a few months and the one useful thing I learned there is that when you help another car to always protect yourself with their car or your own. So always park behind the stopped car and avoid being in direct line of traffic.
      • jstarfish 4y ago
        That's police training in the US too. Also, in confrontations where you are outnumbered, keep one of the suspects between you and the rest. Discourages anybody taking a shot at you when their friend/accomplice is in the line of fire.
        • rqtwteye 4y ago
          Didn't know that one.
• foxyv 4y ago
  Typically when a fixture like that is connected to a live line it is pretty well grounded. In this case it sounds like the grounding wasn't perfect and pretty much turned you and the mirror into a voltage divider. Your saving grace was the fact that you were the bigger resistor. If the mirror wasn't mostly grounding out the circuit, the wet skin would have provided nil resistance and you would have probably at least been burned if not killed.
  • Balgair 4y ago
    Pro tip: Always touch electrical-y things with the back of your hands first; like with a strange animal. Any spasms will cause you to contact away from the thingy.
• intrepidhero 4y ago
  It only takes 80ma across your heart to stop it. Mains voltage, in both the US and the rest of the world, can easily develop that kind of current, especially if there is moisture involved. And yet plenty of folks have accidental contact without lasting effects. Electricity is fickle that way. The difference between, no problem and totally dead can be subtle, random and not obvious. It all depends on the path the current takes. Show it respect.
  • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    >It only takes 80ma across your heart to stop it In a lab, sure. In reality you need a lot of amps going into the body to get enough amps across the heart to screw with it. Defibrillators wouldn't be chock full of capacitors if that wasn't the case. Constantly repeating these sorts of misleading DARE-esque talking points is why nobody takes what the safety preachers have to say seriously. People find out through life experience that smoking while filling gas, a couple amps from arm to arm, working under suspended loads, side rolling big cylinders long distances, using ladders on less than perfect surfaces and other little stuff like that isn't the instant death and dismemberment that they were told it was supposed to be and that throws doubt at everything else. You can't lie to people 50% of the time even if it's "for their own good" and expect them to believe the other 50% of stuff you say. Electricity and many other things are sufficiently dangerous that you shouldn't need to lie.
    • nerdponx 4y ago
      Wait, what? This is like advocating for playing Russian roulette because it's not guaranteed to kill you.
      • rootusrootus 4y ago
        There's a pretty big difference in the odds of a house mains electrical shock stopping your heart compared to the 1 in 6 chance of the bullet being in the chamber that lands in alignment with the barrel.
• dguest 4y ago
  I worked the lowest paying job in a ski lodge one winter. One day while waiting in the cafeteria line, one hand on the stainless steel counter, I noticed that I got a bit of a shock from the steel railing on the other side. There was also a stainless fryer on the counter, but insulated with plastic legs, so I did some experimenting by completing the circuit a few ways: - Counter to rail: weak shock - Counter to fryer: stronger shock - Fryer to rail: nothing I reasoned that the rail and fryer were both grounded, the fryer more so because the metal exterior was wired directly to the ground pin in a 3-prong electrical plug. The problem was the counter. I was pretty stoked: as a lowly ski lodge porter / custodian I'd diagnosed an electrical fault in the cafeteria! Everyone working there was way above my pay grade, but I got the manager's attention and excitedly explained my three experiments. The manager looked annoyed, confirmed that touching the counter and fryer gave a shock, and then unplugged the fryer (thus removing the ground) and went on with the day. As far as I know the counter remained electrified for the rest of the season, or longer. I'm amazed more people don't get electrocuted.
  • newaccount74 4y ago
    This sounds like the counter was picking up static electricity from somewhere. Touching it will shock you momentarily, but it's not dangerous.
    • kadoban 4y ago
      Doesn't sound very likely. Static can come back, but it's not usually going to be constant enough to experiment with unless you're doing something to make it come back or there's a generator for it. Usually it's good for one little light zap and then nothing for minutes/hours.
    • dguest 4y ago
      No it wasn't static, it felt like the 60 Hz buzz that you only get from touching something connected to the electric grid.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• phillc73 4y ago
  Last Saturday afternoon I was driving home in heavy fog. Suddenly coming towards me was a BMW SUV at least 75% in my lane. I managed to brake heavily and drift towards the outside verge. We didn’t hit. It’s about the closest I’ve come to a head on collision. With my whole family in the car, there was utter silence for the next several minutes. Pretty sure I nearly died three days ago.
  • antipotoad 4y ago
    From one survivor of a near-certain-death scenario to another: glad that you’re still here with us to tell your story. No two experiences are alike, but don’t be surprised if it takes you a long while to process what happened. Good that you’re able to talk about it here; if you can, I encourage you to talk to your family about it, even if only to let them know you acknowledge it happened. (Then again, feel free to ignore the unsolicited advice of an internet stranger, but if you say you nearly died, then you’re likely in shock to a degree. Maybe this sounds excessive, but consider professional support.)
    • phillc73 4y ago
      Comment appreciated. My wife, in the front seat next to me, and I were certainly in shock. We pulled over and had a 15 minutes rest while the adrenaline wore off. We breathed deeply and talked about what had just happened. I used to commute in London for many years on a motorcyle and also raced them for a few years. I've had my share of near misses and ended up in hospital once. That was all somehow different - it was only me in danger usually and at least when racing I was always hyper aware that things can go bad fast. This was a totally different experience. Completely innocuous one might think, on a road regularly traveled, at legal speeds. I think having my family with me made a big difference to my reaction. It wasn't just me in danger any more.
      • antipotoad 4y ago
        Glad to be of even the smallest help. I think you have the right head on for dealing with this. Just keep open the door to communication with all the others, especially since the shock will fade differently for each of you. All I can say is that it took me a long time to regain the appetite for calculated risk. My companion in the scenario seemingly shrugged it right off, but only through keeping talking did I know otherwise.
• rqtwteye 4y ago
  It just shows that life is a long sequence of being lucky. It bet during the course of a week everybody does something that may get them killed if unlucky. Most people are lucky but a few aren’t. I can relate to the shock story. In a school lab I managed to lean on a exposed 220V cable. I remember my arm shaking and hearing a low hum but couldn’t figure out what’s going on. It felt like an eternity until I pulled my arm away but I bet in reality it was just a second.
  • lmm 4y ago
    > It just shows that life is a long sequence of being lucky. It bet during the course of a week everybody does something that may get them killed if unlucky. Most people are lucky but a few aren’t. That kind of thinking makes people resist taking reasonable safety precautions. The reality is that risk varies a lot; while there's no such thing as perfectly safe, there are things you can do that substantially reduce your risk of dying young, such as driving less.
• falcolas 4y ago
  Most of the current is going across your skin, not through it, and stone isn't necessarily a good ground. A light fixture generally won't create enough current to kill you. Usually. Probably not worth testing excessively though.
  • rideontime 4y ago
    Aren't light fixtures typically direct mains power?
    • _nalply 4y ago
      Yes but we can only speculate what happened. My speculation: most of the power went through the light and only a part of it shocked the OP.
      • falcolas 4y ago
        I'd agree, and not being connected to a good ground helped.
      • kragen 4y ago
        this is nonsense, and potentially deadly nonsense at that
        • Dylan16807 4y ago
          I'm sorry what? You think it's nonsense that the lit lightbulb had more power going through it than the person touching the socket?
          • kragen 4y ago
            surely the light was dissipating more power, yes, but this was offered as a potential explanation for the fact that the person getting shocked only got a mild shock, a fact to which it has no causal connection whatsoever
• poulpy123 4y ago
  After wondering for 20 years why people got shocked when electric safety is common knowledge, I got shocked myself twice in one year because I was stupid
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• DamnInteresting 4y ago
  I once worked maintenance at a department store, and one of my main responsibilities was electrical repairs (despite lack of formal training). The lighting circuits were all commercial 277 volts. A fluorescent light appeared to be burned out, but as I was changing it, I learned that it was actually a wiring issue when I was installing the new tube atop a 12 foot ladder. My knuckle grazed the fixture and I lit up like a Christmas tree. The resulting reflex caused me to crush the fluorescent tube, but somehow I managed to not fall. Oh, hello death, I acknowledge the brush.
• sowbug 4y ago
  PSA about driving around bends. If you're ever in this situation, don't stop your car anywhere near the bend! If the bend is caused by nature, that usually means that it's wrapping around a hill or trees, which means it's blind in at least one direction. Human drivers are not physiologically capable of stopping a car in time to avoid an obstacle on a blind curve. I've lived near two such blind curves in my life, and at each I've seen minor issues like a flat tire turn into catastrophic accidents when the driver parks and someone else comes along and hits them.
• no_butterscotch 4y ago
  Kind of related, but if someone is being shocked, live, what is the safest way to help them? The immediate answer might be turn of the circuit breaker, but what if we're in a giant office building? Or I don't have access or know where the circuit breaker is? Grab them with rubber gloves?
  • PeterisP 4y ago
    IMHO that's a rare event, usually instead of being continuously shocked, someone gets shocked and then in the worst case they die and you have to apply CPR until an ambulance can try to save them. If someone is being shocked, live, then it all depends on the circumstances, but the most generic standard suggestion in various first aid courses seems to be using a non-conductive stick (e.g. broomhandle) to push them away from the source of power or vice versa. They have probably grabbed the thing with their hand and are unable to release it as the hand is cramped, so that may be difficult. Finding a circuit breaker may be too long. My intuitive guess (though that's not something I have seen recommended) is that intentionally causing a short-circit and trip the breaker might be faster.
  • Nextgrid 4y ago
    Kick them away (or sideways, basically anything to break their grip on the electrified thing they're locked onto) from whatever they're holding. Your shoes aren't conductive so you will be safe. Alternatively, throw a scarf or other garment as a loop in between the victim and the source of the shock and use it to pull them away from it from behind them - the garment not being conductive means you'll be safe.
• brnt 4y ago
  Oh, I had that "why is my arm vibrating" more often than I should. But not often enough for my brain to reduce time to diagnosis, which surprises me every time.
  • tootie 4y ago
    Me too. A light socket was apparently powered via two separate circuits. I turned off one but not the other. Idk what was happening because I touched a live wire with my hand while my elbow brushed a metal door jamb so I think the juice flowed through my forearm and not the rest of my body. Made my arm buzz, but didn't really hurt and I was able to let go. New rule is just turn off every circuit in the house every time.
    • pflanze 4y ago
      Just in case you're not aware of them, there are screwdrivers with voltage detectors[1] that you can (should?) use to check that there's no power on the thing you're working on. [1] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/100-500V-Electrical-Screwdriver-Detector-Practical/dp/B09NPK2N5N/ref=sr_1_41 https://www.amazon.com/100-500V-Electrical-Screwdriver-Detec...
• atoav 4y ago
  > If anyone would like to explain why that didn't kill me I'm all ears. What kills people is current, not voltage. With AC having your heart beat 50 times a second can also cause you to die hours or even days after receiving a shock, but even that requires enough current to flow and cross your skin resistance. Go to ghe hospital even if you are alive and feel well after an electrical shock! Your heart may have suffered from this. That being said, there can be many things at play here. E.g. there could have been contact resistance between the live wire and the fixture, which would mean the current that could have flown through your body was limited by that resistance. The reason why you can touch an insulated wire is because there are megaohms of resistance between your hand and the wire. Lower that resistance gradually and there will be a point where you feel the electricity slightly, lower ot more and there is the shock. The most hurtful thing would piercing a wire through the skin, because then the skin resistance is gone. Aside from contact resistance it could also be that the bath the current took through your body was good (so more on the surface, not across the heart, but down one side of the body and so on). That being said, your description of the shock does not sound like a fully fledged 230V 50Hz shock to me (certified electical engineer). In my experience you will definitely notice it right away, e.g. because you suddenly just see black and a sharp pain including with extreme vibrations that feel like pure energy is hitting you with a brick in the face. Feeling the vibration like you described it and then making the decision to let go sounds like only a very small current was flowing.
  • weaksauce 4y ago
    I'd hazard a guess that the person is using 120vac 60Hz instead of 230/50. 120vac is not as dangerous as 230 w.r.t. this kind of accident. I agree that they seem to have only held the fixture with one arm and probably standing on the leg with the arm outstretched or at least biasing weight to that leg to help reach. the current likely didn't go deep and didn't go across the heart. i agree that there wasn't a hard connection but must have had a path through the fixture that wasn't pure... likely a wire rubbed off the coating a bit but not quite fully so there was not a good connection to shock him with much current.
    • usefulcat 4y ago
• joveian 4y ago
  One thing I learned from reading some stuff on an electician forum years ago is that the actual ground is really not that attractive to household electricity, mostly just to lightning. I recall them mentioning a video of, IIRC, someone connecting a 15A circuit to a metal stake driven several feet into the ground without the circuit breaking. This is also why things like stray voltage shocking cows can happen. I'm guessing that this might potentially be part of why electric shocks aren't deadly more often, it may not be just a path to ground needed but a path through ground and back into the circuit (although the current needed to kill you is much less than tripping a breaker and I think there are various situations that can make it easy for that amount to flow into the ground even if there isn't a good path back to the circuit, which sometimes there is, so possibly this isn't really a factor).
  • TimTheTinker 4y ago
    > the actual ground is really not that attractive to household electricity, mostly just to lightning I assume that's because it doesn't form a complete circuit with the electrical substation your power is coming from -- though some power is delivered, perhaps does due to capacitance between the ground and the distribution lines. Note it would be completely different if your power service used single-wire earth return (SWER)[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return
    • mindslight 4y ago
      The circuit is not back to the substation, but rather your local transformer. There is likely a grounding rod at the pole the transformer is on, and one grounding rod at each of the premises served by the transformer. It's just that resistance of the earth, especially dry earth, is quite high compared to wires.
• dgunay 4y ago
  I touched something with a live current in it once as a child. I was like "huh, that feels kinda weird" and then let go after a second. Only later did I realize how lucky I was that it wasn't lethal! It was in a 220v country even (not that I understand how much that actually affects the chances of causing harm, but still).
• mcguire 4y ago
  Most things that are incredibly dangerous won't kill you individually. Something incredibly dangerous might kill 10%---one in ten. Years ago, I heard of someone feeding their pets cooked, bone-in chicken. Eating cooked chicken bones is very dangerous, but you can do it for years before that one day that it suddenly isn't safe.
  • Sebb767 4y ago
    > Eating cooked chicken bones is very dangerous Why is that?
    • syncopatience 4y ago
      Cooking the bones makes them brittle. They break open easily when chewed, and the sharp edges can perforate the GI tract after they're eaten.
• FactolSarin 4y ago
  It's the volts that jolt, but the mills that kill
• devin 4y ago
  A long time ago someone who did home inspections taught me that if you need to check if something can electrocute you to always use the back of your hand. If it is live, your arm will move away. To this day I always test with the back of my hand before changing a bulb.
• kerkeslager 4y ago
  > My other near miss experience was staying at a bread-and-breakfast farmhouse in Portugal. I had taken a shower, and was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, when I noticed the light above the mirror was crooked. It was one of those swiveling can fixtures, so I reached up to adjust it. I knew it wouldn't be hot since I'd just turned it on, so I grabbed it firmly and then asked myself why it was vibrating. And for that matter why was my whole arm vibrating? When I realized I was being shocked I was able to let go and spent 20 minutes pacing around my room making sure I wasn't dead. You really can't do worse than standing barefoot, soaking wet, on a stone floor, and grabbing a live fixture, can you? > If anyone would like to explain why that didn't kill me I'm all ears. I once got jolted while grabbing an electric transformer. I've researched this a bit, but I'm not a doctor so take my hypothesizing here with a grain of salt: From what I've read, it seems like most deaths are caused by 1) disruption of the human body's electrical systems or 2) severe burns where electricity enters/exits the body. It's a bit unclear to me what exactly causes burns--it seems that arcs, especially longer, sustained arcs, are related, but not necessarily. This seems to happen more with high-current situations. If you didn't experience burns, it's probably because the current wasn't high enough to cause that. The more common thing seems to be disruption of the body's electrical systems, which can occur with much weaker currents than cause burns. The most common thing seems to be that electricity across the heart can disrupt the nerves that regulate heartbeat, but electricity across blood vessels can also cause constriction that causes stroke, and electricity across the brain can cause seizures, disruption of breathing/pulse, etc. It really does seem like the vast majority of deaths are caused by electricity across the heart though. If you don't see cardiac symptoms shortly after a shock, you're unlikely to see them, which is probably because the electricity didn't primarily go across your heart. I'm not sure what the configuration of your grabbing this light fixture was, but a right-handed person grabbing a light fixture with their right hand, would likely see a current traveling through their right arm and then down through their right leg and, to a lesser extent, through their left leg, to the floor (once the current hits your torso there's more "bandwidth" on the way to the floor and the current spreads out more which is why you experienced "vibrating" in your hand and arm, but not your torso). This path doesn't take the current over your heart or any of the parts of the brain that regulate heartbeat or breathing, so that's my best guess as to why you didn't die.
• blahblah1234567 4y ago
  FYI: re: "the Sierra" There are several mountains in North America, Central America, South America, Spain, the Philippines, and probably other countries w/ Spanish language influence named "the Sierra <something>s" or "the <something> Sierras".