Love hearing stories like this about unfiltered, unfettered (and slightly insane) childhood play. Parents today don't even let their kids walk 2 blocks to school unsupervised, lest something terrible happen.
The danger in that story is pretty off the charts. That could have _easily_ led to death, like maybe 1/100? That's something parents _should_ stop. It could have been redirected to safer versions, you can have a lot of fun with lower voltage DC, or at the very least safer setups.
I was once playing with mains (220V) and got distracted on the phone with a friend. I literally took with each hand one cable (they were crocodile terminals) I just could not let go, the current makes impossible to let go. I reacted like 5 to 10 seconds later, by letting me fall backwards, which disconnected the leads from the plug. I was 15 or 16…
I should have gone to the hospital, but I didn’t.
So, I do bot say it is not dangerous, but it is not like it will kill you in 1ms.
I once shorted 380V with my little finger (testing industrial electric motors for overheating). It was like someone hitting the finger with a sledgehammer.
The most I ever got shocked with was 560Vdc @ 10mA I know it was 10mA because it popped the safety breaker on the lab power supply. I was testing a clamp circuit for a high power solid state RF matching network. I had been so careful the whole time using only one hand, but I got complacent for one second and BOOM, hand-torso-hand circuit.
It felt like I got kicked in the chest. Was sore for a few days after.
So lucky I was using the lab supply with a good breaker.
Oh I did not mention it, but the hands kept hurting one or two weeks after that. Really not funny. But 380v is another level of danger, energy goes ^2 with voltage!
Well it was really just the pinkie (and the arm a little bit), but it felt more like a kinetic hit then a electric-shock, pretty terrifying, the pain lasted for like a week (damaged bone marrow?)
Would have been a bad time to find out you had a heart condition. Grabbing with both hands (and being distracted) is indeed very dangerous, which is why the comment you replied to mentioned taking care. Many electricians will do small tasks without cutting off the power and it’s entirely possible to do things reasonably safely if you take some basic precautions.
