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by colechristensen 1307 days ago
It's not really. Plenty of people have handheld tasers powered by 9v batteries and plenty of farm equipment can (and does) mangle people not being careful around very dangerous machines.

This is just a misunderstanding of the risks involved in various things.
2 comments
modeless 1307 days ago
Yeah there are tons of really dangerous things on farms, like Paraquat, or power take-offs. Power doesn't have to be electrical to kill you. Mechanical power will do the job just fine.
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danielheath 1307 days ago
I'm well aware that it's far from the only thing that'll kill me on a farm.

That said, comparing a 50Kv shock to a handheld taser (which typically run at 300-500v) makes me think I might not be the one who misunderstands the risks.

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wfme 1307 days ago
That 300-500v number is off by about 100x. A handheld taser typically runs at around 20,000 to 150,000 volts. This site lists a few alongside their voltage https://www.thehomesecuritysuperstore.com/blogs/the-home-sec...
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colechristensen 1307 days ago
>(which typically run at 300-500v)

You're off by three orders of magnitude. You need about 32 million volts per meter to overcome the resistance of the air. For a gap of a centimeter, it's about a few hundred kilovolts.

And I grew up farming, I'm quite familiar with the dangers.

For example harvesting equipment... the big ones are sort of up to a 30 food wide chainsaw with conveyors and other grabby bits to suck you in. People need to be many meters away from those things while they're running for any sense of safety. A hot spark has nothing on many other dangers and if designed with any sense would only result in severe local burns. Plenty of farm equipment will effortlessly rip a limb off if it doesn't tear your entire body into bite sized chunks.

You know the machines that do that and you don't go near them. When you're the operator you must know where everyone is at all times and know what they mean to do... and be able to communicate with them with a series of gestures, eye contact, short yells, etc. If you don't it's trivially easy to kill your helpers.

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