[sigilis]

What makes you say things like this that are easily verifiably false? I am reaching over and touching my WiFi router’s antennas right now and I’m not being “painfully burned from the inside out.”

I’m hoping the answer is a desire to make a joke and not something that indicates a disconnection with reality.

[haswell]

That’s because your WiFi router’s transmission power is limited.

RF burns are real, but generally aren’t going to happen with consumer gear designed to operate inside your house.

But climb a cell tower and get on the wrong side of a backhaul and you’ll get burned pretty quickly. You can probably get there with some routers running OpenWRT with the power cranked up (not recommending this).

(Worked on RF gear for years and have experienced high power RF output).

[hilbert42]

"But climb a cell tower and get on the wrong side of a backhaul and you’ll get burned pretty quickly"

No doubt cell towers will burn unless one has considerable skin area in contact with the metal mast. I recall being on broadcast transmitting masts where 10s of kW were being radiated and RF burns were accepted as an occupational hazard.

Keeping one's hands firmly clasped to the mast was essential to avoid burns. Nevertheless, some burns couldn't be avoided, for when clinging to the tower one's legs are often wrapped around the mast or a part of it. I recall a good pairs of jeans and overalls being ruined by the RF arcs between the mast and my knees. The pants were peppered with burn holes several mm diameter. Similarly, my knees had multiple RF burns on them.

One should wear shorts in such circumstances so one could keep in full contact with the metal surface but TX towers are often cold and windy places.

Incidentally, I once had a Seiko digital watch ruined on the tower, its LCD went totally black. Also, one can't use a digital multimeter either for the same reasons. However, with precautions we could use ancient analog multimeters so long as they used copper oxide rectifiers—as they had an upper cutoff frequency of about 10kHz. The only meters we found suitable were AVO-8s.

[goda90]

I can think of a few reasons why you might get different results. The plastic cover over the metal antenna might be thick enough to keep your skin away(inverse-square law). The version of WiFi has different frequencies(2.4 ghz vs 5 ghz). The Wi-Fi isn't actively transmitting at full power. Or you're simply not holding it there as long.

I'm sure we could come up with a repeatable experiment for this that doesn't have any risk of burning.

[gruez]

>The plastic cover over the metal antenna might be thick enough to keep your skin away(inverse-square law).

Doesn't the same apply for cellphones? They're not exactly known for having exposed antennas.