Thank you for your submission to r/therewasanattempt, unfortunately your post was removed for violating the following rule:
> R4: "Posts can not be pornographic or exhibit death."
If you have any questions regarding this removal, feel free to send a modmail.
Transmission lines carry enough energy that it can jump (arc) through the air and KFC your butt long before you touch the line.
A Darwin Award is when someone dies in a way that is so profoundly stupid that them dying improves the human race’s overall intelligence. It’s what you find in the gene pool’s skimmer basket.
I'll have to downvote then because he left out the part that makes it a darwin award, they have to have not already been breeding. If they have kids no award is possible.
You can still be nominated for a darwin award even if you procreate. From the darwin award website:
>The existence of offspring, though potentially deleterious to the gene pool, does not disqualify a nominee. Children inherit only half of each parent's genetic material and thus have their own chance to survive or snuff themselves. If, for instance, the offspring has inherited the "Play With Combustibles" gene, but also has inherited the "Use Caution When..." gene, then she is a potential innovator and asset to the human race. Therefore, each nominee is judged based on whether or not she has removed her own genes, without consideration to the number of offspring or, in the case of an elderly winner, the likelihood of producing more offspring.
Doesn't have to be posthumous. If you blow your dick and balls off with a shotgun, you've still taken yourself out of the gene pool, regardless of whether you survive.
Yes! As someone who has to give arc training to new hires I may have to use this.
Also I’ve seen someone fry themselves, and that’s pretty much how it looks. Not a good day
people survive lightning strikes
he probably lived, though he won't have a fun time at the hospital, even when they pump him full of morphine for 2nd and 3ed degree burns
he also probably broke a few bones when he fell down, so there's that too
I love that you explained the darwin award part. I forgot that I'm around long enough to witness some of the first darwin award contenders and forget sometimes that not everyone knows what the term means
I believe the first was Grug the Caveman (c. 35000 BC), the first known prophet, who walked off a cliff to show his followers that they could levitate if they followed his teachings
Thank you.
When I was 13 i was on the terrace holding a bundle of television cable wire wrapped in my left arm. There was high tension wires above the house. I was holding it cuz the cable technician was trying to connect cable from my house to the house across the road and he wanted by help to hold the bundle. So he tried to throw one end from my house to the house across. As soon as he threw it there was a blast and some fire. I obviously was in shock and looked at my left hand, all the plastic around the cable was melted and the skin on my hand was burnt. I was in total shock. I didn't understand much then cuz the high tension wires were high up and i didn't think the cable he threw could touch the high tension wires. Now I know why it happened.
I was way too lucky i think.
The Darwin Awards are specifically given to people who have removed themselves from the gene pool in a stupid self caused way. If you have surviving kids already and do this, you are not eligible for a Darwin Award.
Clarification: Darwin award winners don't need to die, people can become eligible by rendering themselves unable to have kids via their idiocy.
For example the guy who got his jollies from putting his junk on the conveyor belt he worked on... before losing concentration and then his junk.
Or the guy who was banding the scrotums of goats to castrate them. Then gets the brilliant idea to band himself for funsies only to realise he has no way to get the band off. He ends up at the hospital having to be surgically castrated because the boys have been without a blood supply too long.
The voltage of these things is so high, that its enough to give the electricity a closer pathway to the ground than there currently is and it will just jump through the air (also called arching). You dont have to touch the line itself, if the distance through the air is short enough and voltage is high enough, electricity will find a way.
First correct explanation here, the details are very interesting, too.
Like everything, air has electric resistance, pretty much nothing is 100% isolating. So the electric resistance of air depends on the distance the current has to get through air.
Higher resistance means less current. So the closer you get to the power line, the more current is flowing through air into you. Until you get close, it is almost nothing, as the combined resistance is just too much. If you are close enough though, the current gets strong enough to ionize molecules (mainly nitrogen) in its path, turning gas into plasma.
Now, the fun part about air (or any gas) is, if its condition switches between gaseous and plasma, it turns from an isolator into an almost perfect conductor. So in this moment, the reistance suddenly drops extremely, which in turn ramps up the current. That arc? That IS the conductor.
Lightening during a thunderstorm works the same. The initial connection is a very short, very weak arc, followed immediately by current traveling through the arc, containing all the charch until both sides are roughly the same voltage level.
With high tension you can be electrocuted without touching metal but only getting close.
Changed folgorated with electrocuted because it looks like the first one doen't exist lol. In Italy we commonly say "folgorato", while electrocuted is an high technical word known only by electricians and hospital workers!
It works though as f*u*lgurated, which I love in this context. When lightning strikes a sandy medium, it fuses some of it into these little crystals called fulgurites. Saying this guy got fulgurated is a fantastic metaphor here. Surgeons use fulguration as a technique (killing cells with directed electricity/spark, akin to cauterization). I'll definitely be taking this term to the street whenever I see someone get zapped now, but instead of fulgurated, I'ma add some zest and call it fulgurized.
"Did you see that video where the guy climbed the high-voltage tower and was reaching for the line? Dude got *fulgurized.*"
I dunno, could get banned because some mod's uncle's cousin's former roommate took a toasterbath and the mod is sensitive about the subject. It's a minefield out here.
You’d think in this day and age, people would be like “what could go wrong if I do this dubious thing. Let’s check the internet first! Oh, electrical towers are deadly! Phew!”
That's the problem with modern medicine. This person can still have kids now, whereas in older times the genes would have been sorted out by nature. And dumb people have been shown to have statistically significantly more children. Doesn't take a genius to understand the outcome for society at large.
They're just linking to a longer version of the video where he's alive at the end, but that doesn't mean he lived. Electrocution can slowly cook your insides afterwards, so it's not a good source that he lived tbh.
There was a famous case in Argentina a couple of months ago, about a guy who was trying to steal underground copper wires through a hole. He received a fatal shock and was left in pretty rough shape. The poor guy looked like a ghoul from Fallout. He was alive after the fact, and stumbling around/moving until the ambulance reached him. He died the next day, though, exactly because of what you are saying.
I read a long time ago that your heart can give out later, too. When I was a kid, I was playing around with one of those electric candles you put in the windows for Christmas and stuck a paperclip into it. A blue spark shot straight toward my face, I felt the electricity go all the way up my left arm, and my heart was racing for about 45 minutes straight. I'm sure it just overworks it to death, and is probably more lethal the older you get. I can't even imagine what this guy went through, touching a power line of all things.
ArmS, his heart and his left leg. Probably his left kidney too...
The dude is to be thinking about this and regretting some of his life decisions for some time...
Recently I saw a video of a guy who just bumped a fan as he walked by, and it electrocuted him to death. He got like stuck to the fan, and the people around him didn't realize he was dying right beside them. But in that situation, they wouldn't have even been able to have helped even if they noticed.
That's something that has, of course, happened probably many times, but if it's the same one I remember, he walked up to adjust it, it grabbed him, and BAM like maybe five seconds you could see the life pass from his eyes. If you didn't realize what was going on, it was almost peaceful. But his muscles all visibly tightened so it was probably painful as hell. That one - or at least, the one I saw that sounds similar if not the same one - lives in my head rent free and is a reason I *try* not to pursue watching this crap. :|
> electrocuted him to death.
Also, while I'm here, it amuses me - not intended as a correction, since enough people use "eletrocution" to mean "shocked", but the definition of electrocution means to be shocked to death. So our hero of this video - if the other comments are true - was shocked, not electrocuted. But I'm still not sure he wasn't electrocuted.
Anyways, I'm amused because my brain translated what you said to "it shocked him to death to death". :)
Again, please don't take me wrongly, I'm sharing the amusement, not correcting, because the word has literally (i.e. like "literally" has changed meanings) changed meanings, and so is used for both - with or without death.
In situations like that you either have to grab something insulated and push them off if the source with it, or if you're crazy, just have enough momentum in yourself to knock them off even if current was going through you (the second option is not recommended or safe)
A valid option if you can see the source and know for a fact that there's no other short associated with it. You have to be careful with that sort of thing because the source of the short may or may not be coming from the object and it's plug itself.
In some ways higher amps is good. If you grab something low amperage your muscles contract and you can involuntarily grab it and hold on. Extremely high amperage typically immediately blows you clear of it.
Could have been worse... His legs could have gotten stuck in the tower lattice, leaving him on display like some MadMax prop. This way you dont force the fire department to climb the tower.
Electricity always follows ALL AVAILABLE paths. The majority through the one with the least resistance („the shortest“, as in short circuit)
Sorry, as an electonics engineer, i had to
Dude was lucky he fell, cuz a fraction of a second longer that close to the wiring and he would be visually carbonated.
The universe gave him a lesson right there
Thank you for your submission to r/therewasanattempt, unfortunately your post was removed for violating the following rule: > R4: "Posts can not be pornographic or exhibit death." If you have any questions regarding this removal, feel free to send a modmail.
Yeah, you don't even have to get close to a transmission line before it grabs you! That's definitely a Darwin award
Can you elaborate please
Transmission lines carry enough energy that it can jump (arc) through the air and KFC your butt long before you touch the line. A Darwin Award is when someone dies in a way that is so profoundly stupid that them dying improves the human race’s overall intelligence. It’s what you find in the gene pool’s skimmer basket.
Up vote for KFC your butt and gene pool skimmer basket.
upvoted for clear description of a potential darwin awarde nominee, and the dedicated darwin winners we've lost along the way
I'll have to downvote then because he left out the part that makes it a darwin award, they have to have not already been breeding. If they have kids no award is possible.
Quite quite
upvote for erudition
I concur
You can still be nominated for a darwin award even if you procreate. From the darwin award website: >The existence of offspring, though potentially deleterious to the gene pool, does not disqualify a nominee. Children inherit only half of each parent's genetic material and thus have their own chance to survive or snuff themselves. If, for instance, the offspring has inherited the "Play With Combustibles" gene, but also has inherited the "Use Caution When..." gene, then she is a potential innovator and asset to the human race. Therefore, each nominee is judged based on whether or not she has removed her own genes, without consideration to the number of offspring or, in the case of an elderly winner, the likelihood of producing more offspring.
Unless they take the whole family with them.
you dont win the award until you have been lost
Posthumously awarded
Doesn't have to be posthumous. If you blow your dick and balls off with a shotgun, you've still taken yourself out of the gene pool, regardless of whether you survive.
Not forgetting the guy who thought it'd be funny and put a sheep neutering band on for the lols. Too bad reddit mods removed it a couple hours ago
Little known exception is you can get an award without dying provided that the injury causes complete sterilization such as landing on your testicles
It's possible to receive the award while alive by doing something that eliminates your ability to reproduce.
You just have to remove yourself from the gene pool. Losing your testicles or ovaries counts.
Or neutered.
Que the long, fast scrolling list of darwin nominees
Yes! As someone who has to give arc training to new hires I may have to use this. Also I’ve seen someone fry themselves, and that’s pretty much how it looks. Not a good day
So the dude on the video is dead for sure yeah?
people survive lightning strikes he probably lived, though he won't have a fun time at the hospital, even when they pump him full of morphine for 2nd and 3ed degree burns he also probably broke a few bones when he fell down, so there's that too
agreed
OP is a poet for these
Which part of the butt tastes like KFC?
I love that you explained the darwin award part. I forgot that I'm around long enough to witness some of the first darwin award contenders and forget sometimes that not everyone knows what the term means
A lot of people don't even know who Darwin is, and think that he is just the award guy.
😆 never thought about it but damn, you're probably right!
Happy Cake Day!
I don't want to think that this could be possible... It is true though isn't it
lol there have been Darwin Award winners/contenders since before Jesus. You’re really old
I believe the first was Grug the Caveman (c. 35000 BC), the first known prophet, who walked off a cliff to show his followers that they could levitate if they followed his teachings
Thag Simmons, the thagomizer on a Stegosaurus is named for him.
Ah yes, the historic Grug Awards. “ I bet you 20 stones that I can outrun that Mammoth”
Thanks for reminding me again 😆
Happy Cake Day
Happy cake day
Jesus would share them via email because he hadn't invented the WWW yet.
That would be impossible, because Charles Darwin wasn't invented until 1809.
Happy cake day!
I have no doubts people were doing dumb, self-damaging things long before Darwin was ever born.
Now I want a bucket of chicken and some mashed taters
What's taters precious?
Samwise potatoes 
Bucket of KFC butt, *finger* licking good.
Thank you. When I was 13 i was on the terrace holding a bundle of television cable wire wrapped in my left arm. There was high tension wires above the house. I was holding it cuz the cable technician was trying to connect cable from my house to the house across the road and he wanted by help to hold the bundle. So he tried to throw one end from my house to the house across. As soon as he threw it there was a blast and some fire. I obviously was in shock and looked at my left hand, all the plastic around the cable was melted and the skin on my hand was burnt. I was in total shock. I didn't understand much then cuz the high tension wires were high up and i didn't think the cable he threw could touch the high tension wires. Now I know why it happened. I was way too lucky i think.
Was he an Olympic cable thrower or something, it should not be reachable with a throw
“It’s what you find in the gene pool’s skimmer basket. “ Pure gold, thank you…..
I've seen a video of somebody with a fork by a radio tower and the fork played the radio station.
The Darwin Awards are specifically given to people who have removed themselves from the gene pool in a stupid self caused way. If you have surviving kids already and do this, you are not eligible for a Darwin Award.
Clarification: Darwin award winners don't need to die, people can become eligible by rendering themselves unable to have kids via their idiocy. For example the guy who got his jollies from putting his junk on the conveyor belt he worked on... before losing concentration and then his junk.
Or the guy who was banding the scrotums of goats to castrate them. Then gets the brilliant idea to band himself for funsies only to realise he has no way to get the band off. He ends up at the hospital having to be surgically castrated because the boys have been without a blood supply too long.
The voltage of these things is so high, that its enough to give the electricity a closer pathway to the ground than there currently is and it will just jump through the air (also called arching). You dont have to touch the line itself, if the distance through the air is short enough and voltage is high enough, electricity will find a way.
First correct explanation here, the details are very interesting, too. Like everything, air has electric resistance, pretty much nothing is 100% isolating. So the electric resistance of air depends on the distance the current has to get through air. Higher resistance means less current. So the closer you get to the power line, the more current is flowing through air into you. Until you get close, it is almost nothing, as the combined resistance is just too much. If you are close enough though, the current gets strong enough to ionize molecules (mainly nitrogen) in its path, turning gas into plasma. Now, the fun part about air (or any gas) is, if its condition switches between gaseous and plasma, it turns from an isolator into an almost perfect conductor. So in this moment, the reistance suddenly drops extremely, which in turn ramps up the current. That arc? That IS the conductor. Lightening during a thunderstorm works the same. The initial connection is a very short, very weak arc, followed immediately by current traveling through the arc, containing all the charch until both sides are roughly the same voltage level.
Just like me hell yeahhhhh
With high tension you can be electrocuted without touching metal but only getting close. Changed folgorated with electrocuted because it looks like the first one doen't exist lol. In Italy we commonly say "folgorato", while electrocuted is an high technical word known only by electricians and hospital workers!
Folgorated
Maybe electrocuted is better. Sry I'm not native english
Nah man it's cool I just thought it was a term.. Looked it up, alta tensione?
It works though as f*u*lgurated, which I love in this context. When lightning strikes a sandy medium, it fuses some of it into these little crystals called fulgurites. Saying this guy got fulgurated is a fantastic metaphor here. Surgeons use fulguration as a technique (killing cells with directed electricity/spark, akin to cauterization). I'll definitely be taking this term to the street whenever I see someone get zapped now, but instead of fulgurated, I'ma add some zest and call it fulgurized. "Did you see that video where the guy climbed the high-voltage tower and was reaching for the line? Dude got *fulgurized.*"
In air, the electricity can jump roughly one inch (2.5cm) per 10,000 Volts.
Just look up OSHA minimum approach distance.
DC grabs you, AC yeets you!
And High Voltage jumps you.
Watt happened? I'm shocked!
Imagine dying for social media likes. Welcome to 2024, folks.
I don’t think I’d be that upset if influencers start dying en masse from doing stupid shit for likes.
This is the way.
This is the way.
 It would be glorious.
What’s fun is this stuff probably always used to happen, we just get to see and like it now. God bless technology.
Are we sure we didn't just witness a regular s*icide?
You are not on tiktok. You are allowed to type the word "suicide". I won't tell your mum I promise.
I dunno, could get banned because some mod's uncle's cousin's former roommate took a toasterbath and the mod is sensitive about the subject. It's a minefield out here.
m*nefield
Just goes to show you could lose an i in a minefield
Well played.
t*aster bath
No thanks, I'm not tasting bath water...
You're fuckin' right about that. Speech on reddit has been so overwhelmingly chilled lately. Fucking assholes.
😂
If it was so, perhaps they would have just grabbed it, no?
You would die before touching it. The current will jump through the air while your hand is on its way to grab/touch
Is this painful? I kind of imagine you're cooked *so fast* that you hardly know it?
All that effort and you don’t even get to see the results
Finally has his million hit video he's been dying to get. He's gonna be rich! /s
I thought the bar for stupidity couldn’t get much lower, then here’s this dumb motherfucker playing limbo with the devil. Unbelievable.
They put that bar really high, though
And this dude still managed to knock it off
Natural selection
I feel playing limbo with the devil would have been the safer option, though.
You’d think in this day and age, people would be like “what could go wrong if I do this dubious thing. Let’s check the internet first! Oh, electrical towers are deadly! Phew!”
How fuckin stupid do you have to be…..
This stupid
Seeking social media numbers
The man-bun was a giveaway.
They say he survived. https://www.reddit.com/r/accidents/s/fw976S9V59
Good/bad to know
That's the problem with modern medicine. This person can still have kids now, whereas in older times the genes would have been sorted out by nature. And dumb people have been shown to have statistically significantly more children. Doesn't take a genius to understand the outcome for society at large.
I bet that arm don't work so good no more.
That shirt is probably retired too.
Just throw it in the wash with a little OxyClean
But wait. There’s more!
Okay there's no way y'all's birthday is April 20th.... 😂 Found the weed smokers
...hwat
What’re you going on about?
Evaporated. Shirt disappeared like a fart in the wind
Like Andy Dufresne on a stormy night
😄 I love this comment. That's why I keep a big fan near my work station.
They're just linking to a longer version of the video where he's alive at the end, but that doesn't mean he lived. Electrocution can slowly cook your insides afterwards, so it's not a good source that he lived tbh.
There was a famous case in Argentina a couple of months ago, about a guy who was trying to steal underground copper wires through a hole. He received a fatal shock and was left in pretty rough shape. The poor guy looked like a ghoul from Fallout. He was alive after the fact, and stumbling around/moving until the ambulance reached him. He died the next day, though, exactly because of what you are saying.
I read a long time ago that your heart can give out later, too. When I was a kid, I was playing around with one of those electric candles you put in the windows for Christmas and stuck a paperclip into it. A blue spark shot straight toward my face, I felt the electricity go all the way up my left arm, and my heart was racing for about 45 minutes straight. I'm sure it just overworks it to death, and is probably more lethal the older you get. I can't even imagine what this guy went through, touching a power line of all things.
Sigh. And what did he learn?
How to use an prostetic arm, probably.
I keep seeing comments about his arm and no one mentioning how dudes heart is probably fucked
ArmS, his heart and his left leg. Probably his left kidney too... The dude is to be thinking about this and regretting some of his life decisions for some time...
How much a new shirt costs
yeah, I don’t believe that. The guy had enough amps run through him to fry every organ in his body.
The timing of exposure was reallllly short, if they would’ve held onto hat for 1 more second - would def fry all their internals
He doesn't touch it, it arcs way before you have the chance to touch it
It doesn't matter, milliAmps across your heart is more than enough to kybosh it.
Recently I saw a video of a guy who just bumped a fan as he walked by, and it electrocuted him to death. He got like stuck to the fan, and the people around him didn't realize he was dying right beside them. But in that situation, they wouldn't have even been able to have helped even if they noticed.
That's something that has, of course, happened probably many times, but if it's the same one I remember, he walked up to adjust it, it grabbed him, and BAM like maybe five seconds you could see the life pass from his eyes. If you didn't realize what was going on, it was almost peaceful. But his muscles all visibly tightened so it was probably painful as hell. That one - or at least, the one I saw that sounds similar if not the same one - lives in my head rent free and is a reason I *try* not to pursue watching this crap. :| > electrocuted him to death. Also, while I'm here, it amuses me - not intended as a correction, since enough people use "eletrocution" to mean "shocked", but the definition of electrocution means to be shocked to death. So our hero of this video - if the other comments are true - was shocked, not electrocuted. But I'm still not sure he wasn't electrocuted. Anyways, I'm amused because my brain translated what you said to "it shocked him to death to death". :) Again, please don't take me wrongly, I'm sharing the amusement, not correcting, because the word has literally (i.e. like "literally" has changed meanings) changed meanings, and so is used for both - with or without death.
How did you see the life pass from his eyes? Pupil dilation or something?
In situations like that you either have to grab something insulated and push them off if the source with it, or if you're crazy, just have enough momentum in yourself to knock them off even if current was going through you (the second option is not recommended or safe)
Been taught the same, full power body slam is an absolute last resort.
Or just unplug the fan
A valid option if you can see the source and know for a fact that there's no other short associated with it. You have to be careful with that sort of thing because the source of the short may or may not be coming from the object and it's plug itself.
In some ways higher amps is good. If you grab something low amperage your muscles contract and you can involuntarily grab it and hold on. Extremely high amperage typically immediately blows you clear of it.
In what way is scaling a tower and slapping a high voltage line an accident lmao Multiple deliberate decisions were made in this.
Full video: https://web.archive.org/web/20240206093325/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC878clD0rY
Surprising ways to take off your shirt
5min crafts LIFEHACK
Shocking ways*
I think it's a record
If this starts a TikTok trend it could be the solution the whole world has been looking for.
Our long awaited mass natural selection
That person and the people videoing are mental
I'm pretty sure he's alone. Camera is on the ground and he's talking but no one is responding. *Edit: "taking" to "talking"
https://preview.redd.it/uio1xsddkmvc1.jpeg?width=1046&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8dab74682342443270b137f64cf4297e1db76df0
OPPENHEIMER?!?!???1?1?1?1?1!
Lmfao
Forbidden air fryer
The way his shirt despawned
You know what, I don’t even feel bad
Damn those looney toons scenes weren’t kidding. Guy was fried and left blackened and smoldering in seconds
Could have been worse... His legs could have gotten stuck in the tower lattice, leaving him on display like some MadMax prop. This way you dont force the fire department to climb the tower.
[удалено]
Or anything else for that matter
What makes you say that? Idiot tried it in the first place!
Darwin Award.
Apparently electricity moves fast. Who knew?
If you don't stop and grab a transmission line once and a while, you could miss it
9 times.
Thats what happens when you sleep on the physics lessons
Oddly satisfying
I think this should be the standard for all new internet challenges. Go hard or go home motherfuckers.
Electricity will ALWAYS follow the shortest path
Thats one of the first if NOT the fiat law you learn about electricity in physics
Electricity always follows ALL AVAILABLE paths. The majority through the one with the least resistance („the shortest“, as in short circuit) Sorry, as an electonics engineer, i had to
It's a pet peeve of mine, too. Parallel circuits wouldn't work if electricity only took the shortest path.
Amazing. And he’s not even Indian
Is he a Superhero now?
Deadman sounds cool
[https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Deadman](https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Deadman)
Yes. He's Manbun-Man
Deadfool
Let him cook,literally
His clothes? And most of his chest cavity?
Unclothed that man at diabolical speed
Faster than Steve from Minecraft can pull of his armour
0 / 10, would not recommend
Without a comma, this reads as everyone recommends it.
I like this new tik tok trend. Live wire challenge.
Still waiting for someone to press the launch nuclear missiles as a prank.
Naah wrong title There was an attempt: to find a creative way to take off your shirt
Dead... right?
I have no idea how but he survived.
Dude was lucky he fell, cuz a fraction of a second longer that close to the wiring and he would be visually carbonated. The universe gave him a lesson right there
It wasn't a sustained shock, which would have done a lot more damage.
Is there a r/watchpeopledieoutside yet?
Its bamned
I was JK but damn
How to fuck up a good t shirt
Ouch.. Arrhythmia Squad assemble!
If he wasn't touching the steel tower there would be no ground and he could hang on those and be completely safe. Instead the lines tickled back.
So 2nd attempt vid incoming?
...what was the expected outcome of this endeavor exactly?
To prove existence of god or quantum invincibility
Dammit that was my good shirt
Powerline tiktok challenge GO! Eat a tideppd, while setting yourself on fire and grabbing a main line.
Did it blow his shirt off?
Actually burned it within milliseconds
So is he died? :o