Re: C4 Racing from Newbury - 2 horses *electrocuted*

First, make sure you're not in an electric field (by checking to see if it has an electric fence).

Reply to
Angus Rodgers
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In article , Donwill writes

Speculating, I wondered if it was a decommissioned cable from a building that had been demolished, and someone forgot to disconnect the other end. Normally it would lie in the ground minding its own business, but with all the rain we've had recently, it made the ground conductive enough to become live?

Hope we find out. Interesting lesson if nothing else.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

In article , ARWadsworth writes

*groan*

Bet the vast majority of Wail readers wouldn't have got it.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

Apparently they died on the Ohm run.

Reply to
ARWadsworth

A "dormant" cable has been mentioned in several articals I've read (on the 'net so muct be true...). Someone has already mentioned that this was the first meeting since the new year and that heave due to the frosts may have damaged an old cable...

As with most things the media will have got bored with the story by the time anything definite is discovered/worked out and the coverage will be minimal.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

"harry" wrote: Now let's get more down to earth on this matter!

Yes! Before you are all grounded. Truebrit.

Reply to
Truebrit

I've been resisting the temptation to join in.

Reply to
John Williamson

It's best not to say anything that hertz anyones feelings.

Reply to
ARWadsworth

Yep. Best thing to do is just all go ohm. Truebrit.

Reply to
Truebrit.

Electric cable theory;

The trouble with all this is that they spike paddocks to airate them before a race meeting; they could sever an unknown cable by doing that. Due to the very wet nature of the ground, if the cable came into contact with another cable, even if the first was not live the contact would be able to make it so, and that way the cables would both be live, hence capable of killing the horse even from an unused cable.

Equines and electric;

As for the earlier comment on why it took so long for the horses to die if it was electricity - electricity can stop the heart and can interfere with the nervous system, but it is not always an immediate effect of death. Potential difference across the heart can cause it the fibrilate (flutter) or stop altogether, so the first doesn't kill the animal for a very long time, if at all eg Kid Cassidy could have been affected in this way. The second (heart stopping) is a slower way of dying than you'd think - it's possible to have a human's heart stop for several seconds at a time, many times a day as they age (in certain heart conditions) and for the person not to die. Horses are on a larger scale but I expect it works in the same way. So electrocution is very much possible.

(Also)

My concern is that they really need to review the CCTV because you're right - the cable would be a really odd thing to happen, really very rare. My fear is that someone may have been using a taser or something similar to strike the horses. A live cable would have affected the grooms more (most only reported getting shocks off the horses, not the grass), and the other horses when they walked over that part of the paddock.

Reply to
zoe rothwell

I know watt you mean.

Reply to
Angus Rodgers

AC.

Reply to
Angus Rodgers

Currently.

Reply to
Skipweasel

I searched for references to that possibility yesterday, when this whole thing came up, but all I got were references to an apparently famous champion horse named Taser Gun. :-(

Reply to
Angus Rodgers

In both humans and horses, if the ventricles of the heart fibrillate, they effectively stop pumping blood immediately, cardiac output drops to zero (or near as damn it) and blood pressure starts to plummet. Within a very few seconds in the case of humans, brain function is depressed so much that consciousness is lost and they keel over. A human heart stopping for as long as several seconds would almost certainly result in fainting. I have no reason to believe that it wouldn't be the same for horses.

(At what point the person actually dies, assuming the heart doesn't resume normal beating, is hard to say and is somewhat academic.)

Francis

Reply to
Francis Burton

We are now in the 2010s - 40 years later than the 1970s.

Fliss

Reply to
Felicity S.

Anyone electrocuted before they breed is weeded out of the gene pool, but I agree that would make only a marginal difference.

BTW, the word 'electrocution' is short for electric execution but these are accidental deaths; however, I guess that's preferable to the media using it to mean any (survivable) electric shock.

And 'pandemic' just means a disease unconfined to one location, it doesn't mean the disease is deadly or that large numbers have been infected; another word which is wilfully misused by the media.

Hmm, perhaps we should shock toddlers, to train them...

In that case, what voltage *would* it take to kill a human, when the current passes through each leg and not across the chest?

Fliss

Reply to
Felicity S.

It said on Radio 4 news today that a section of underground cable has been removed and taken away for testing.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

formatting link
gives both meanings of the word: execution by electricity being the original meaning (1889) but in the sense of accidental death due to electricity, it was first recorded in

1909.

Similarly, New Oxford Dictionary of English, OUP, 2001 says "injure or kill someone by electric shock: [example] a man was electrocuted on the rail track", implying accidental death rather than execution.

Reply to
Mortimer

By the way, the prize for unintentionally crass comment (quoted in

formatting link
goes to Marching Song's part-owner Graham Thorner who said the fallen horse had 'great potential'. ;-)

Reply to
Mortimer

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