Franchez1337

I was a member of a large constituency of young horny men across the country/world which shared the same BB account for several years in the late 2000's. The credentials were distributed by word of mouth and no one knew who actually paid for it. Based on the difficulty in browsing (simultaneous requests were rejected) it is reasonable to assume that several hundred if not thousands of people were trying to hop on the Bang Bus at the same time at any given hour of the day. I've always thought that the account must have generated the most traffic, ever. Is there anyway you could confirm? Username = bobdole

I can take a guess. You describe the power line as high tension, so this was probably a transmission line that'd you'd see on lattice towers. Transmission lines are energized to voltages between 100,000 all the way up to 1,000,000 volts. Voltage is a measure of potential difference or how much "force" is pushing a given electron to go to a high voltage to a low voltage. This works just like water flowing from high pressure pipes out to atmospheric pressure levels. For these 100kV+ power lines, electrons can be forced to move across open air, through a human, and down a buildings drainpipes to the low voltage region of ground. This doesn't happen with 120V power coming out of your wall outlet because the voltage is so low. But, high voltage means the electricity can cause dielectric breakdown of air and create a path of its own to ground. Thats why special care is (supposed to be) taken to ensure metal energized to these high voltages is designed to remain a safe distance from the ground, people, the equipment supporting it and other energized equipment.

So, the failure of the municipality to ensure safe approach distance to these lines meant that the safe buffer between energized line and ground is now occupied by a building. Add a person in the middle and there is less and less air that electrons need to jump across to find their path to ground. All you needed was someone, say, raising their arms to stretch and the resistance between the line and ground is low enough for the electrons to make the jump. When it happened, an "arc flash" occurred. The thousands (potentially tens of thousands) of amps that suddenly rushed to ground got there through a plasma created when the air broke down. The plasma was made up of super heated gasses that burned hotter than the surface of the sun. This arc would have engulfed you and had it not lasted only a tenth of a second, you wouldn't be doing this AMA. Arc flash is no fun.

Source: I design control systems that interrupt faults like this.