Re: WOAH ,tesla coils KILL?

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 1/31/01 2:14:52 AM Eastern Standard Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes: 


>
> <drewallmighty-at-hotmail-dot-com> 
>
> Waittaminute, 
> They can kill and have killed? 
> I've never heard mention of this before. 
> Like i do know that the capacitor can do some serious damage, but even when 
> I was young and foolish at 13, i knew better than to lick my fingers and 
> put 
> them on a charged capacitor's connector! When tuning my coil I always have 
> a 
> piece of hv wire with probes attached to it for shorting out the caps, and 
> whenever i am transporting my coil i always short out the caps with 
> alligator clips and wire. 
> But from all of the responses i have gotten on the "COOL THINGS YOU CAN DO 
> WITH YOUR COIL" bit, most of them have mentioned the voltage coming off of 
> the top load being dangerous and can kill? Like of course I did make sure 
> that my legs were away from the strike rail! 
> Are there ACTUALLY recorded deaths from tesla coils? 
>
>                                                   Up here in Canada, 
>                                                    Drew Murray 


Drew, 
        I know it is difficult for a young person to hear "you shouldn't do 
that"  from an old-timer. It is more difficult to reason with someone who has 
done something stupid and gotten away with it several times (drug abuse, 
drunk driving, smoking, playing tricks with high voltages or X-rays, etc.) 
However, let me try putting it this way; Either: 
1. What almost everyone on the list are telling you is right. or 
2.  What almost everyone on the list are telling you is wrong. 
3. You stop doing these stunts. or 
4. You continue these stunts. 
Now: 
A) Combination 1 & 3 = you live. 
B) Combination 2 & 3 = you live. 
C) Combination 2 & 4 = you live. 
D) Combination 1 & 4 = you die, or you are brain-damaged and/or physically 
impaired for life. 
Do you like these odds and the consequences?  In "Russian Roulette," it's 1 
in 6. 

Most of the booklets describing "tricks" that can be done with Tesla coils 
were published at a time (pre-1935) when little was known about the effects 
of HF/HV electricity. At that time, people took "galvanic baths" ( 
electricity flowing in the bathtub), high-voltage "purple rays" were believed 
to cure everything from insomnia to cancer, and Tesla himself believed that 
the effects of X-ray exposure were no more serious than a bad sunburn. 
Unfortunately, a lot of this Quackery has been republished as "New Age 
Secrets".  Even if you don't fry yourself on stage, just like radiation 
poisoning, the long-term effects of high-voltage nerve damage are often not 
immediately visible. 

If it were not for the fact that every accident (act of stupidity) can result 
in legislation outlawing or restricting hobbyist and serious researchers, 
some might root for you to become a Darwin Award winner. In case you don't 
know, this is a posthumous award for people who improve the population by 
creatively removing themselves from the gene pool before reproducing.   

Be Afraid - you and coiling will live longer. 
Matt D. 
(my first coil would have been 42 years old next summer and I still have all 
my body parts and brain cells)