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Comment by cryptonector | Hacker News Reader

Speaking of cord-cutting. My mom used scissors to cut the _power_ cord to our TV that I was watching when I was... nine years old, I think?, and I was shocked that nothing happened other than cutting power to the TV. I still am shocked that there was no short-circuit.

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Probably (depending to some extent how old you are) that's just not very much power, so you're not going to get exciting movie style arcing for example. Even if the scissors connect live and ground, at those powers the result is the circuit gets dropped which doesn't look like anything much. And if they don't do that yeah, no more power to the TV and it's all over.

The electrical supply for a whole house can make pretty sparks, you don't want to be near that as it could definitely kill you.

The electrical supply for a whole street can tear a noticeable crater in the street, which is why after my street lost power last year actual street repair people turned up to fill the hole and lay more asphalt as well as the electricity network people.

Please don’t spread bad information about electricity.

15A at 110V is enough to weld your tool to the wires carrying the current.

The mother probably got lucky and the neutral wire pulled away as it was cut and didn’t complete the circuit to the live wire.

The scissors must have had plastic handles that prevented the mother from becoming part of the circuit.

It's possible that my mom was not the dummy I thought her to be in that moment. She might have played a sleight of hand where she unplugged the cord and cut it almost at the same time. My memory of that event is hazy enough that what I remember was thinking how crazy dangerous what she did was -- I might not have checked if the plug was still in the socket.

Was it on 120V in the US or a 240V country? In my 240V country that would normally make a terrific spark and a bang.

Do you remember if it blew a fuse or tripped a breaker?

240V. I don't remember anything about a fuse/breaker blowing/tripping.

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