What to do if You get Stuck on Electricity Wires
Created | Updated Oct 19, 2003
Electricity wires are dangerous! Do not intentionally get stuck on power lines, or climb up to them! Do not play with electricity!
Getting stuck on Electricity power lines is often a problem, and one which can be very tricky to get out of, especially as these power lines are on the top of huge pylons a long way from the ground.
How to get stuck
One major problem is how to get up there in the first place. There are several hypothetical ways to get onto the power lines.
- Falling from the sky
Hopefully with a parachute on. Use of this method is common, as parachutes can get tangled in the lines.
- By Climbing up on the pylon
This method is trickier, as there is not only the barbed wire around the base, but also the risk of electrocution. Electricity can jump a few centimetres through air at high voltage, so anyone using this method must launch himself or herself from the pylon, and be a few centimetres away from it, and then catch the wires to be stuck.
- Get Accidentally Caught in a Twister
Which then flings you on the wires. It's times like that, you know you should've gone into the storm shelter.
- Making poor Navigation and Thermal-Hopping choices while Hang-gliding
- Summoning a Hurricane or Earthquake to Brings the Wires Down
This allows you to hop on at leasure, but requires knoewldege of witchcraft and/or gods. However, if you can do that, anything else shoule be a doddle.
- Causing a Flood
By carefully caculating the change in water level, you can cause break a dam or levee, which will then raise you (and hopefully, the boat you are in) to wire level.
- Misjudging the quantity of charge in your cannon for a Human Cannonball Act
And a weak tent.
What to do if you are Stuck
One method is to jump. The most likely outcome of this is some broken bones.
You could lower yourself down on a rope, providing that the rope stops some way above the ground and does not touch the pylon. An alternative to the rope is the trusty towel, though you may need quite a few.
If there's anyone nearby, see if they can make a soft landing spot for you.
What NOT to do if you are stuck
Accept the local's attempts to get you down using a ladder. This will create a link to the ground, which will send a few thousand volts through you. For the same reason, do not try to climb back down the pylon.
The scientific reason for all this is that the wire is at several thousand volts, while the ladder or pylon is at 0 volts. By completing a circuit to the ground, there is a difference in voltage (or "potential" as Physicists like to call it), of a few thousand volts.
Look down. Power lines are quite high up.
Panic
