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From: cphoenix@csli.Stanford.EDU (Chris Phoenix)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Surviving Electrocution
Message-ID: <18678@csli.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 15 Apr 91 04:35:12 GMT
References: <1991Apr12.212721.519@husc3.harvard.edu> <41087@netnews.upenn.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford U.
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In article <41087@netnews.upenn.edu> rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe) writes:
>>2) How non-uniform is the resistivity of animal (human) tissue?  Is there
>>   any way to make the resistivity more uniform, or otherwise to ensure
>>   that the current in part (1) is roughly uniform throughout the body?
>
>It's going to be pretty non-uniform, because blood vessels and other
>structures will provide guides for current flow...  

A sufficiently high voltage will stay on the outside of any conductor.  
I think several tens or hundreds of kilovolts would do it.  Of course,
when you increase the voltage, you dissipate more energy... if the pulse
can be *very* short, you could probably make a pulse that would flash-boil
the outermost layer of skin, and then move in *very* quickly and cool the
remaining skin off, for something like a second-degree burn.  

This is stretching the rules a bit, but it might even be possible to make 
the pulse go through the steam rather than the solid body, so that most
of the energy dissipated would not be in direct contact with the body.  
You could probably maintain tens or hundreds of amps for several seconds 
this way, and keep the person alive afterwards. 

Reader's Digest had a "Drama in Real Life" a while ago that involved a 
person shorting out a high-tension power line for a long time (at least 
several seconds, I don't remember.)  She got severe burns where the spark 
hit her, but as I recall survived with no other ill effects.