I got a reeaally good shock once trying to put together a Van Eck device.

I’m pretty confident that I can now tell the difference between AC and DC purely from what the shock feels like. (AC is more tingly).

There needs to be a level 4 for this maybe? Yeh, Ive electric shocked myself. often. 2500V once. you should see what your muscles look like when they get hit by that kind of voltage. No ill effect except a sore arm and ‘wow, holy shit!’

That was all in my teenage years, the learning how to make really dangerous electrical stuff phase. Now Im an uber really dangerous electrical stuff maker. I often calculate out the internal inductances in things to make sure they maximum pulses are in the low several thousand amp/ low numbers of megawatt range, so they dont destroy themselves in case of a fault… When you can make electric arcs that are louder than most guns, you’re really cookin…

Deliberately. Repeatedly. And as a demonstration.

Definitely needs a level 4! As in, for a shock that laid you flat out on the floor, possibly in an unconscious state.

Oh yeah, in one lab I worked in, they got so used to my “woo-hoo-hoo!” cry when I got a zap that they didn’t even bother laughing at me anymore.

6kv neon sign transformer. I could feel the tingling in my chest for half an hour.

RF burn from a radio transmitter. Arc went in the palm of the hand, out the elbow. I’ll never point things out with a metal pen on the antenna field again.

I shocked myself so often as a child that I discovered many commonly unknown side-effects of electrical shock. Including the wiping of short-term memory. Which is partly to blame for the high number (I lost count at the age of 6 when I had shocked myself in the last year more times than I had digits). I have also managed to bruise myself from such violent shocks including one from a TENS unit. The strangest side-effect I’ve developed in the last year is picking up my cell-phone as it gets a signal from the cell tower. Whether it’s a call, text, or just a update to the system.

Oh, yeah. I was about to work on a piece of equipment powered by 3-phase, 400Hz, too-much-voltage. As it had burst into flames the previous day and the first step in extinguishing a blaze is “turn off the power”, I assumed the power was off. Rule two: don’t assume. I was alone. On a weekend. On a ladder. I lived, but did not work any more that shift. I presume the loss of one of the 1.5kv phases was not related…

I’m not sure this should be level 3, surely many people would be elligible for this badge but not badges 1 or 2.

Needs a level 4 – “I’ve been shocked senseless”

Considering all of the other discomforts involved, I was surprised that I noticed I was shocked. -15 degrees F, windy, tired and at the end of the night shift and then suddenly I felt so alert and awake and disoriented and tingly. Oh yeah. Turn the geophysical equipment off before you dismantle it. Ooops. Although I* would* recommend it as an alternative to camp coffee.

Disassembled a disposable camera to get at the flash capacitor. ‘Nuff said.

I’ve done the disassemble a disposable camera specifically to make it into a taser, and shocked myself several times intentionally while testing it.

Then there was the time I was testing a wall outlet, and my finger bridged the multimeter leads. It felt tingly for about half an hour afterwards.

Then there was the time I was debugging a test light assembly that was hooked up to a 12 V lead acid battery. I’d been unplugging it and replugging it every few minutes. The one time I forget to unplug it, I unwrap the electrical tape from both solder connections from the light to the battery connector, then touch both of them, one in each hand, at the same time. There was a sizzling bang, I felt like I got kicked in the chest, and I got knocked a good two feet backwards. Ooops.

My personal favorites:

Using a pair of lineman’s pliers I found on the street to adjust the gap on a running 15kV Jacob’s Ladder. Turns out the insulation on the handles wasn’t quite what it used to be. It took me a second to realize WTF just happened and I had a few episodes of random near-fainting the next two days. By far the most interesting shock I’ve given myself.

Replacing a ceiling light fixture, standing on a chair. Tested it – no current, start disassembling *shock*, test it again, no current, *shock*. Two days (took a break to think about what I could be overlooking) and SIX shocks later, the wires finally shorted and tripped the (wrongly labeled) breaker it was _really_ connected to. Even after shorting it again like 4 times, I was still flinching when I went to grab it again. Do not trust that the previous owners of your home understand how to properly wire things.