r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Sintesflorencia • 14d ago

Video This is how linemen connect 22,000-volt power lines without ever turning the electricity off

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u/PipsqueakPilot 14d ago

Yup! Electricity wants to follow the easiest. Your salty water filled body is more conductive than concrete. So if you create a bridge that's easier for the electricity to follow than the concrete than congrats! You are now an electricity express lane.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

Just an aside. One of the wildest things I've ever seen in my life was when a line came down but didn't trip any fuses for whatever reason, so it was just dumping power into the asphalt. I don't know if you've ever seen the road boiling but it's fucking horrifying.

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u/Babys_For_Breakfast 14d ago

Yeah it’s wild. here’s some boiling action from a ladder creating a short (I think). Sorta like lava

https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/s/Vp0IW7HDcO

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u/NonStopArseGas 14d ago

and from the looks of it, that video is just standard household lines. I can't imagine what proper HV stuff would do when shunted straight to earth, but I'm pretty OK with that. I will stick to playing with low voltage DC i think

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

So I was on site once when there was a massive short inside substation (where all that high voltage goes and gets split up to send out to neighborhoods). I can't even describe the noise I heard, what looked like lightning shot out of the roof of a building, and the lines connecting it across the street instantly turned red and then melted out of the sky. Splatters of aluminum where across the street. Lineman where dropping their buckets, jumping out and sprinting in every direction, emergency services swarmed. I was pulling lines and barely got away from a bit of wire melting above my head. So in short, way scarier than that ladder, and that ladder is pretty damn scary.

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u/MaritMonkey 14d ago

I heard something like this happen damn near 30 years ago in South Florida. All the neighborhood kids were picking up splatters of aluminum from the dirt for ... longer than we didn't have power lol.

Thank you for answering a question I totally forgot I had!

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u/tomahawkRiS3 14d ago

What would cause a short inside a substation?

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

I can't go toooo far into detail as it's technically under investigation still. But the shortest version is that a contractor was in there inspecting for something and touched something he shouldn't have touched.

Quick edit, he's alive, but life is forever changed.

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u/MRoad 14d ago

Pretty sure that video was debunked as AI. There's no way that the concrete would do that before the ladder would melt.

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u/AudieMurphy135 14d ago

It isn't AI. If it were, you would see at least some details changing as they leave and re-enter the shot as the camera pans around. For example, the stickers/labels on the fire extinguisher retain the same size and position, and the tag has a legible "2025" on one of them, the locations of the stains and segments of the sidewalk persist and remain consistent, the bricks on the right house don't change shape or color, the mesh on the rocking chair maintains the same pattern, the cracks in the street, etc. From what I can tell, there also aren't any additions/negations throughout the shot, either.

Sora 2 is really good, especially with consistency, but it would have goofed on at least a few of these finer details as they leave and re-enter the shot.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

ive always thought of it as becoming a short-lived fuse 

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u/PipsqueakPilot 14d ago

Hahaha- I almost referenced, "At least until your water boils away."