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How to accidentally electrocute yourself and start a house fire

hagbard_c 2y ago
Your great-grandfather may have built his own house, your grandfather probably climbed the roof to replace some tiles which got blown off in a storm, your father may have stood on a ladder to paint the walls. They all seem to have survived long enough to reproduce so you are able to warn off people from trying to be self-reliant because it may hurt them. Safety is certainly a consideration when contemplating projects like this one but it is by no means the only one and often not even the most important one. Safetyism is what you get when you make it the most important consideration, it is not a recipe for a healthy society. BTW, if you really want to electrocute yourself that puny little battery won't do the trick, for that you need a a bit more voltage. Never fear, that is easily achieved by taking a few of those plastic snow poles used to mark out roads in colder places and filling them with 18650 cells. A 2 metre pole is good for 30 cells which give you about 130 Volts of DC fully charged. Those cells are capable of pushing quite a bit of current so if you're really into dangerous games that'd be an example of one.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > Your great-grandfather may have built his own house, your grandfather probably climbed the roof to replace some tiles which got blown off in a storm, your father may have stood on a ladder to paint the walls. They all seem to have survived long enough to reproduce so you are able to warn off people from trying to be self-reliant because it may hurt them. Survivor bias. Look at average life expectancy up until the 1950s... it was shockingly low. Most people had many MANY many children just to see one or two live to adulthood - accidents and pandemics claimed their lives, workplace injuries and wars took them as adults. Your great-grandfather likely had four to five siblings [1], earlier generations were at around seven in the US [2]. It's only because of vaccines, OSHA, antibiotics and medicine that human life expectancy has exploded over the last decades. House fires are among the most stubborn killers that still remain, the numbers are going down extremely slowly [3]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/global-fertility-has-halved https://ourworldindata.org/global-fertility-has-halved [2] https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/average-number-children-per-us-family-historic-infographic.pdf https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/a... [3] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/residential-fires/ https://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/residential-fires/
- BigParm 2y ago
  You don't understand. Even if you are a competent blue collar person and you build your own house today, you hire qualified electricians. Everyone does this. It's a rule written in blood. With electrical, the catastrophic risks start right away. Especially with batteries, what a circus. It's not learn-as-you-go like computers. A mistake doesn't give compiler errors. It might just kill you now, or get red hot later under certain conditions you haven't tested. If you can't see that this gongshow is obviously dangerous then you are a fool.
FridayoLeary 2y ago
It would be easier to buy a laptop with a battery pack that ages badly until one day it it goes pop and ignites (ahem dell).

Your great-grandfather may have built his own house, your grandfather probably climbed the roof to replace some tiles which got blown off in a storm, your father may have stood on a ladder to paint the walls. They all seem to have survived long enough to reproduce so you are able to warn off people from trying to be self-reliant because it may hurt them. Safety is certainly a consideration when contemplating projects like this one but it is by no means the only one and often not even the most important one. Safetyism is what you get when you make it the most important consideration, it is not a recipe for a healthy society. BTW, if you really want to electrocute yourself that puny little battery won't do the trick, for that you need a a bit more voltage. Never fear, that is easily achieved by taking a few of those plastic snow poles used to mark out roads in colder places and filling them with 18650 cells. A 2 metre pole is good for 30 cells which give you about 130 Volts of DC fully charged. Those cells are capable of pushing quite a bit of current so if you're really into dangerous games that'd be an example of one.

mschuster91 2y ago
> Your great-grandfather may have built his own house, your grandfather probably climbed the roof to replace some tiles which got blown off in a storm, your father may have stood on a ladder to paint the walls. They all seem to have survived long enough to reproduce so you are able to warn off people from trying to be self-reliant because it may hurt them. Survivor bias. Look at average life expectancy up until the 1950s... it was shockingly low. Most people had many MANY many children just to see one or two live to adulthood - accidents and pandemics claimed their lives, workplace injuries and wars took them as adults. Your great-grandfather likely had four to five siblings [1], earlier generations were at around seven in the US [2]. It's only because of vaccines, OSHA, antibiotics and medicine that human life expectancy has exploded over the last decades. House fires are among the most stubborn killers that still remain, the numbers are going down extremely slowly [3]. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/global-fertility-has-halved https://ourworldindata.org/global-fertility-has-halved [2] https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/average-number-children-per-us-family-historic-infographic.pdf https://populationeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/a... [3] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/residential-fires/ https://www.usfa.fema.gov/statistics/residential-fires/
BigParm 2y ago
You don't understand. Even if you are a competent blue collar person and you build your own house today, you hire qualified electricians. Everyone does this. It's a rule written in blood. With electrical, the catastrophic risks start right away. Especially with batteries, what a circus. It's not learn-as-you-go like computers. A mistake doesn't give compiler errors. It might just kill you now, or get red hot later under certain conditions you haven't tested. If you can't see that this gongshow is obviously dangerous then you are a fool.

FridayoLeary 2y ago

It would be easier to buy a laptop with a battery pack that ages badly until one day it it goes pop and ignites (ahem dell).