I’ve now got that “but I want to push the Do Not Push button” feeling.
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A friend in Jamaica told me this one:
Mary had a little lamb
she tied it to a pylon
Ten thousand volts shot up its arse
and turned its wool to nylon
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linemen will often attach to those lines via helicopter to keep the ground potential from being low enough to cause an arc and kill them.
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Maybe Utah has an infestation that requires staying up high and off the ground…
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75,000 kilovolts. Direct human contact with high-voltage lines can cause sparks and, from there, fires. I guess these imbecilic thrill-seekers have never heard of wildfires.
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They don’t look like no local boys.
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Left to its own devices, stupid usually cures itself.
For example:
I doubt I was the only one that cringed at the ending. Nevertheless…
When stupid cures itself, it tends to take others with it.
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Yeah, we’re just working up to megavolt in North America - they’re building 1MV in China pretty often. 765kV exists here, 345kV is common. He meant 75kV (though that’s a weird voltage, it’s probably a 138kV line to line and 79kV to ground.)
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Worst Limerick Ever.
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I think it’s quite possible, no corona needed (insert stupid COVID pun).
The neon tube is an open circuit that can be modelled as a very low value capacitor.
When the potential on the metallic end terminals (the capacitor armatures) has risen enough to start the arc, the gas inside is ionized and the tube lights up for a brief instant, using up the accumulated charge (the arc has a comparatively low resistance), then the cycle starts again.
The charge carriers are provided by the grounded terminal (the side you hold in your hand or plant in the ground).
The reason a human (or animal or car or…) cannot feel this field is that the internal resistance is very low, preventing potential build-up across the extremities (feet to head or the hand holding the tube).
EtA: There are many YT videos demonstrating it.
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I was thinking the same thing. Either 75KV or 75000V, definitely not 75 000 KV. Those are more like high power Tesla coil voltages. And last I checked, most power lines don’t tend to be surrounded by giant arcs.
But would the current melt the wire? Wouldn’t the higher voltage rather lower the current?
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30kV per centimeter is closer to reality for conductors in air unless they are especially pointy.
Rough estimates for power line max voltage: count the number of insulator disc’s suspending the wire and multiply by 15,000 to get the line’s max voltage (multiply by 15 to get the answer in kV).
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I’m reminded of the worker in Kansas who was working on the towers fixing an overload. Job was nearly complete but for checking in and phoning his supervisor. God knows what happened during that phone call but the poor bastard copped all the volts…
When they found him the Wichita lineman was still on the line.
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Came here for this. Even when I saw the hammock I knew it was graboids!
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Well, I recall an afternoon stroll along a road below powerlines in the UK, holding hands with my then girlfriend. Loosening the grip so just my fingertips were running across her palm, we could feel a definite 50Hz buzz - faint but clearly not just our natural attraction 
.
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