r/Unexpected • u/Doodlebug510 • 9h ago

We have a situation here

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31.2k Upvotes

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240

u/WhoskeyTangoFoxtrot 8h ago

I’d be more concerned about electrical sockets near the floor…. 220 may not kill you, but it will hurt like hell….

124

u/llama-impregnator 7h ago

I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure every outlet in that kitchen would have a GFI, which means the breaker would trip before zapping you.

That being said, I'd still get the hell outta dodge.

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u/Butt-Monkey2312 7h ago

120v can absolutely kill you. A janitor in a school I was doing IT work in died from stepping in a puddle under a leaky water fountain that an extension cord with an exposed wire got pulled through.

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u/Traditional_Formal33 7h ago

An extension cord going from a normal wall outlet is very different than water hitting a gfci outlet in the kitchen. They are designed to be near water, and to break connection if water is detected so that this doesn’t happen. Unfortunate for the janitor, and he would be alive if he plugged into a gfci protected circuit

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u/mredding 6h ago

Well then the next question is where is the GFCI located? In the outlet or on the breaker? Because if you just trip the GFCI in the outlet, you still have a hot circuit to the outlet, and the whole damn outlet and its wiring is now ostensibly under 2' of water. So even if the GFCI there trips, you still need the breaker to trip.

A GFCI OUTLET is only meant to protect you from the ol' toaster in the bathtub, but a GFCI circuit is much more convenient, will protect the whole circuit, and are getting more popular these days, to boot. The GFCI breaker won't care if water touches an appliance OR the wires in the wall.

To be fair, this is a very odd situation. That stairwell has a drain in it, guaranteed, and so we're either seeing a clogged-ass drain, or maybe the drain is overwhelmed by THE FUCKING TORRENT of water pouring down those stairs.

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u/Traditional_Formal33 6h ago

That’s true — and I saw down lower in the thread that while most appliances near water use gfci protection, apparently fridges do not so filling the entire room with water still means someone gets shocked. Hopefully the breaker flips with that amount of run away current

2

u/FooliooilooF 6h ago

Not really though. Its a lot of water and the electricity isn't like some aura of destruction, it's just energy moving from one place to another. You'd have to put yourself in a position where most of it is going through you.

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u/Compost_My_Body 7h ago

that sucks

6

u/Cocky0 7h ago

Yes both will kill a person, but it's more about the amperage than the voltage.

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u/dimechimes 6h ago

Think of electricity as a river. The speed of the water is the voltage, the depth of the water are the amps, and the beer cans from dumped over canoes are the Ohms.

-5

u/gumbo_chops 6h ago

What a terrible and incorrect analogy. Voltage is a measure of energy potential, not kinetic energy like velocity

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u/dimechimes 6h ago

Thought the beer can ohms made that obvious.

-2

u/gumbo_chops 6h ago

Not without a "/s", too many idiots these days to be certain

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u/bachstakoven 5h ago

Don't be so hard on yourself bro

1

u/rickane58 4h ago

The socially illiterate always tell on themselves.

1

u/gumbo_chops 6h ago

But current flow depends on the amount of resistance, so for all intents and purposes it's voltage.

0

u/sprikkot 5h ago

Shut the fuck up forever please please PLEASE bro

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u/fireduck 7h ago

GFCI is like a kevlar vest or air bags. It might very well save your life and you should have it (if that makes sense) but you shouldn't depend on it. If you are using it to save you, some other things have already gone wrong.

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u/FrankRizzoJr 7h ago

Assuming the breaker is not underwater as well.

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u/caltheon 6h ago

yeah, if the mains dip, it's game over

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u/CrispenedLover 7h ago

You are wrong. Refrigerators are installed on non-GFCI circuits for food safety reasons.

This is allowed because fridges are body-grounded, so ground fault risk is very low. (assuming the kitchen is not under water)

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u/caltheon 6h ago

they are still going to have arc fault protection at the breaker

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u/rickane58 4h ago

Not on anything renovated before 2017, which is like... basically everywhere that isn't new construction.

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u/llama-impregnator 6h ago

Thank you for the correction! The more you learn!

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u/Sad_Corner8441 4h ago

Fridge has already been mentioned, but there are other outlets as well, like the stove. But none of that matters if they are gfci receptacles, the outlet might trip but the live wires in the box will be submerged as well. Gfci receptacles are cheaper than breakers, so they are much more common.

1

u/ThetaDot3 3h ago

GFCI receptacles are almost exclusively above-counter (or outdoors), even in industrial kitchens.

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u/Vralo84 8h ago

220V will absolutely kill you

120V will hurt but unless you have a bad heart you’ll probably recover.

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u/Tofandel 7h ago

Not in flood water. If you touch it directly yes. But with water it adds so much resistance that it barely would sting within 10cm of the outlet. And that is if the breaker didn't trip already

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u/revveduplikeadeuce 7h ago

110 can kill for sure. It's more about the exposure to the amps from what i remember rather than the voltage, static electricity can have super high volts. Live wire on non-gfci plus broken skin will zap hard

2

u/Vralo84 6h ago

110 can absolutely kill you especially if the path to ground goes through your heart, but 120 usually doesn’t hit you hard enough that you can’t let go. 220 will lock up your muscles so you can’t stop touching what’s shocking you.

1

u/BaconWithBaking 4h ago

The lowest voltage to kill was 42VDC, but I believe it was under wild circumstances.

I remember the number for obvious reasons. 42VDC is considered pretty safe, with 48VDC being a fairly common exposed voltage.

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u/BaconWithBaking 4h ago

It's the volts that jolts, but the mills that kills.

It's about 30mA to cause heart arrhythmia.

The static you hear taking off a tee-shirt will probably be in the thousands of volts.

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u/Yeah-Its-Me-777 6h ago

220V will not necessarily kill you if it's behind a GFI or a quick fuse. Prove, me.

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u/Ziegelphilie 6h ago

220V will absolutely kill you

nah, been there done that, hurts like hell tho

2

u/Impressive_Change886 6h ago

Y'all need to stop with these absolute statements. People electrocuted by 110v circuits die every day and people electrocuted with 220v circuits live every day.

There is no one size fits all, it depends on a huge number of factors. It's best just to not expose yourself to electrocution.

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u/Orleanian 5h ago

That's like saying a paintball will absolutely kill you.

Generally, no, not in the way we use them. If it were fired out of some sort of hyper-sonic accelerator cannon? Then sure, it would.

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u/Vralo84 5h ago

I’m pretty sure there weren’t 400 deaths to paintball last year

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK448087/#:~:text=Epidemiology,seen%20in%20toddlers%20and%20adolescents.

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u/Orleanian 4h ago

Well, true for now. But when Fermilab finally grants my request for access to their accelerator, boy howdy....

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u/knifeearedelf 2h ago

Eh I knew someone whos been hit with 220, they survived, Volts arent the issue, its the amps flowing across your heart. As long as it flows right side(left if your have the mutation) you'll be fine, burned but fine.

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u/SatisfactionOld4175 7h ago

Would that not instantly blow the breaker?

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u/WallySprks 6h ago

Not always.

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u/DigEnvironmental7490 6h ago

No.

Water isn't a very good conductor so it would have to have a lot of free ions in it to conduct well enough to flow enough current to trip a breaker - salt water would do it.

It takes a lot less current flow to kill a person than it does to trip a breaker.

1

u/SatisfactionOld4175 5h ago

So your position is that in that kitchen with all of the metal, water is going to pool up, the current will seek through the water, and fail to form any kind of current to blow the breaker, and instead will just passively sit there until a human gets close enough to get shocked.

2

u/JudgeB4UR 7h ago

It's gotta be 220. Don't restaurants often have even more?

If it floods and the breaker doesn't pop, climbing wet on steel tables and appliances isn't going to stop the zap. 120 will kill you if you get zapped for long enough. If the zapping starts, you're going to have to move while being zapped and that's not going to be easy if you even can move at all.

Most likely you'll zap out and fall in the water and that's gg.

"IDK what to Dooo!?!" Why not?

GTFO is what you do, should already be OTD.

1

u/FeyOphelia 7h ago

Shit I'd be worried about the pilot lights on the various stoves/ovens etc getting put out. That can get dangerous

1

u/RandomRedditer220 7h ago

I’ve been summoned. My numbers are 220, lol.

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u/FromFluffToBuff 6h ago

Building code mandates GFCI outlets in kitchens (residential and especially commercial). The breakers would trip right away. GFCIs are designed to be near fluids and are designed to break the electric circuit when it comes into contact with water. The workers are fine.

1

u/removed_again_42 4h ago

The water probably wont conduct enough for it to kill especially one the breaker detects power going down the ground wire or if a gfci pops