In the trade we call that, "taking your picture".

 

Just yesterday a guy posted that he worked as an electrician and was taught to leave the hot wire hot and put the switch in the ground side of the circuit. That will get you even if the switch is off.

As for the arc flash and reaction, yes. Once upon a time a spark jumped in a circuit breaker box and I came out of there so fast I would have run my head right into a wall if my helper hadn't caught me as I went by. (You never get over working on 30,000 volts.)

And thanks to this forum for pointing out the hazards. I'm changing my ways.

 

This just happened about 5 minutes ago. I had just bought a pair of 72 watt bulbs and one of them would not work. So, I looked at the contacts on the '3 bulb tree' (you know, one of those lightstands that has 3 adjustable mini lamp shades) and the one in the middle seemed to be recessed in compared to the other two.

This is where my carelessness came into play. I was confident that I switched off that middle one and decided to use the pliers in my Swiss Army knife to pry it up a bit. The instant I touched the contact with the pliers it flashed an extremely bright light and made a very loud pop. It blew off a small bit of the tip of the pliers.

Scared me half to death and immediately I felt incredibly lucky and flat out dumb.

My question is how seriously could this have injured me? What stopped me from being zapped? I didn't feel a thing. I know my hand gripped the steel in between the plastic outer casings of the Swiss Army knife...

I feel incredibly lucky and stupid. One instance of carelessness can seriously wreck you. This just happend minutes ago and immediately went to google an electronics forum. I'm still a bit shaken.

About 15 years ago, I was asked to help a neighbor start an old military generator to run his heater because an extended power outage from an ice storm. I was walking up his driveway just as he got it running on his own. i stood there as he started plugging things in. The engine started to stall so he opened the panel door to play with the carburator (the distribution panel was on a hinge that alllwed access to that side of the engine). As he dove into the engine, I saw the two big, exposed, lugs that proved power to the panel from the generator. Before i could say anything, the door hit its open limit and swung rebounded toward my neighbor's back. As soon as it hit him, his back arched and flung the door open again and he flew out.

He walked around like a zombie with a smoking back - looked like a bad movie sceene - but a lot scarier.

He was eventually ok but had two nasty burns on his back. A little investigation found a missing cover for the lugs (long before he bought it). Also, he damaged his furnace blower motor because the generator was running at 400 Hz instead of 60. He eventually scrapped the thing before it killed him.

 

When a teenager (a long time ago), I also played with a neon sign transformer. Jacob's ladder was the favorite thing to make with one. I would draw an arc from one of the rungs to my finger for short intervals. All of this was in my bedroom. One day my uncle was over and wanted to see what I'd been up to lately, so I showed him my Jacob's ladder and how I could draw an arc to my finger. It was hard to convince him to give it a try, but he wasn't going to be outdone by some kid. Trouble was, he was sitting on the edge of my bed. The bedspread had metallic thread and the corner was touching the heat register. When he reached out to demonstrate his lack of fear, a heavy arc jumped to his hand, he jumped up yelling and told my mother the I acutally made his eyes light up. He is long gone, but left me with many great memories, of which this is only one.