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by hagbard_c 616 days ago
That may have been true a long time ago in the age of CRT (picture tube) televisions but anything with a flat screen contains a bog-standard switching power supply with a bunch of 450V-or-so capacitors which will give you a nasty bite but not much more than that. In CRT sets it typically [1] wasn't the discrete capacitors which posed a problem but the CRT itself which was used as a smoothing capacitor for the HT power supply. The in- and outside of the back of the tube were (are) covered with a conducting paint (e.g. 'Aquadag' [2], a colloidal graphite coating) with the inside connected to the HT power supply and the outside connected to ground. That 'internal capacitor' can keep its charge for a long time. As to whether it 'can kill you' that seems to depend on a lot of factors ranging from the discharge path, physical condition of the subject and more. There are many reports on people getting zapped who describe it as 'a nasty jolt' but survivor bias means this is not what you should go by - just avoid getting zapped by discharging the tube.

[1] there are exceptions, e.g. older vacuum tube sets which used a mains-driven EHT circuit with discrete capacitors

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquadag