South England- Third Rail electrocution?

Shad Bushweller: DC doesn't actually draw you in as you suggest, but the muscle contractions that you talk about mean that some touching a DC conductor is more likely to grab onto it as a consequence of those contractions.3rd rail electrification is still dangerous and will cause a certain amount of arcing if you happen to be foolish enough to use your body to create a short circuit. Therefore, from an external perspective, you are very likely to see a bright flash and hear a bang as the traction current flashes over. The heat generated by this arc could be enough to set the person's clothes on fire. However, as with most internal injuries, you probably won't see much happen to the person except that they will almost certainly fall down. Up close there will be burns to the body where the current entered and left them....Show more

Derrick Smsith: The principal internal electrical conductors in the human body are the arteries and veins. Electric shocks involving head! to hand, head to foot, hand to hand and hand to foot will all pass via the heart and induce fibrillation, usually followed by death. A foot to foot contact will not necessarily cause fibrillation of the heart, but will often manifest itself by burning of the body tissues at the points of contact. Victims though badly burnt, often survive.Edit : You are right, it is morbid !...Show more

Anibal Katayama: At those voltages the AC/DC question disappears and it all boils down to raw power. Contact with high voltage power conductors is explosive - if somebody is standing on the ground and touches the rail with their hand it is common for fingers to be found scattered around afterward. If a person makes contact with a pair of shoes that are not sufficiently insulating - and most aren't - the feet will explode inside their shoes. The worst is yet to come. High voltage contact (in the electric industry it is referred to as "contact with primary" because the high voltage pr! imary voltages are stepped down to relatively safer secondary ! voltages, like 120/240/480) causes 4th degree burns - the affected paths are burned from the inside out. We use higher voltages than third rails do - 7000-15000 volts as compared to about 1000 volts for trains - but this aspect is the same. Treatment requires leaving the burned path open for weeks or months to clean out flesh as it dies. Progressive necrosis results from the vascular loss that accompanies tissue death, so the tissue death occurs in steps. Death can occur more than a year later.If you google "electric train suicide" the first link that comes up is a home video of an apparent suicide from grabbing an overhead train power line. Be warned it is very graphic, so much that I will not post the link here....Show more