Eli5: if electricity passes through you and into the ground, does that cause a fuse to blow?

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I’ve just watched an old tv show where the main character is tortured in someone’s basement with a live wire. The current is obviously flowing from the wire, through him and into the ground. Why does this not cause the fuse to blow?

I think this is probably just an error on their part, but I’m kinda curious now if that’s actually correct or not. I’m tempted to steal the idea for a book I’m writing but I’d need to know first whether or not that’s a valid method of torturing someone (never thought I’d find myself writing that sentence 😆).

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12 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If your goal is to use electricity to torture someone, you could always just bypass the fuse.

People used to do this (unsafely) all the time when fuses were actually the standard instead of breakers. If the fuse blew, and you didn’t have spares, you would turn off a few things and then shove a coin in to complete the circuit until you could get a new fuse.

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