this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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Ok but for real, that wouldn't work, right? How would them holding it complete the circuit? The circuit is just gonna be from one screw to the top of the pole back through another screw, not the part the person is holding.
I mean, a car battery isn't going to do anything even if you could complete a circuit. You can just grab the terminals on a car battery, 12V isn't high enough to be noticeable on dry skin.
You'd want to solder on the hot lead of an extension cord hooked up to 120 if you wanted to make sure they never touch that pole again.
Disclaimer: don't do this, it'll probably kill.
A electric horse fence is a better option. Will zing you but isn't lethal and also has an intermittent current. Specifically designed to be touched by living things without harm. But stay away from cattle fencing, that can kill someone with a heart condition.
I think there is potential for some non lethal zapping if done right (one terminal to the poles other to ground)
Your skin is where most of the body's resistance is, and electrocution / shock can occur at much lower voltages if applied internally/ to a cut.
There's an urban legend about a navy Electrical engineer stopping his heart by trying to measure his internal resistance with a voltmeter- he stabbed one probe into each of his thumbs and the portion of a single volt the meter uses to test resistance going across his heart was enough to cause afib.
Now, with pole dancing, theres some potential, for a sweaty bikini to make contact with both an electrified pole and the interior of the dancer's labia, conducting enough electricity to impart a noticeable shock.
No matter the voltage though, I think the main problem is the body being part of the least resistive, or any, path to ground. Unless the screws holding the bottom of the pole also protruded through the downstairs neighbor's ceiling, and you run the negative wire out your window and into theirs, connecting both ends of the pole to the battery....
You can short the terminals on a car battery with your body with no issue (there's a theory that that's why you see it in movies so much - if anyone actually tries it the studio isn't giving them an idea that actually works. Same with duct-tape gags and chloroform), but it might melt the hardware and set the floor on fire which would be fun! What they should really do is connect a HV source and charge up the pole. Won't cause any lasting harm, but hopefully it'll convince them they drove a screw through a live wire.
Who the hell told you you can short a car battery with your body? You absolutely can’t.
You definitely can. As in you can grab both terminals and not be injured.
Source: am high level electrical engineer.
Oh yeah? What level?
Two joints
That's decently high ngl.
That's not a short, by definition.
Just checking: Is this a semantic argument about my use of "short"?
Did you mean short circuit the battery using your bare hands?
I meant contact both terminals at once with your bare hands.
But that won’t short circuit it is my point
Guys, GUYS! Calm down, you are all a bunch of nerds.
Okay, define nerd
😆
How do you mean?
A short circuit is when you provide a path for electricity to travel directly from A to B.
You can't do this by touching the battery terminals because your dry skin won't transmit the electicity. You're just touching battery terminals.
If you hold a AA battery in between your finger and thumb, you're also not short circuiting it. You're just holding it by its terminals.
But if you hold an unfolded paperclip to both sides, you are shorting it. The electricity can travel through the paperclip.
If you hold a nine volt battery against your dry palm, it's not a short circuit. But if you hold it against your tongue, it is a short circuit because the electricity can travel through your (wet) tongue. You can feel the difference.
As far as I know, there is not a large population using "short circuit" the way you were (just touching a battery terminals).
No, there is absolutely current flowing when you touch both terminals, it's just an incredibly tiny amount. You can do the math yourself and see, it's a basic application of Ohms law. The formula is (I=V/R). The reason you feel the tingles from a 9 volt you lick vs one you touch with your finger is that the resistance is much lower when licked, allowing more current to be produced - but the resistance is not infinite when you touch it with your finger, it's just high enough that you do not notice the tingling from the small amount of current that results from a circuit with such high resistance (also it travels across the surface and on a much less sensitive part of your anatomy etc. etc.)
The way you worded it makes it sound like it's very easy to short a battery with your body, not that attempting to short a battery will cause "no issue" because it won't actually work.
I'm aware - I very intentionally spared everyone the lecture on the mechanics of how this works because it is, on the whole, very boring. However if we really wanted to get into the boring technical details nobody but us cares about then yes, you are indeed shorting the battery, it's just for a ludicrously small amount of current. Ohms law (I = V/R) gives us that.
Oooh, because we're too dumb to understand the finer details of electrical engineering, is that it? IS THAT IT?
Because yeah I am too dumb to understand even the coarser details of electrical engineering.
Yes exactly, I cannot stand the idea of you plebs learning things. How dare you even ask about this.
Jokes on you, we CAN'T learn. Ha.
Thing is, you also called it "shorting" the battery. Usually a short is an unintended, unsustainable low resistance path.
While your body may technically close the circuit, calling it a short makes it sound like an actual electricution risk. That combined with the unclear "no issue" usage made it pretty confusing, I thought you had no idea what you were talking about until I saw your reply.
It's just the common parlance. I wouldn't have done this were it a more technical setting, but this is a shitpost community - so I'll just have to beg forgiveness for my imprecision. Fortunately, should anyone go to test this by fondling their car's terminals, no harm will befall them due to my lack of strict accuracy in the description here (though they might get rebuffed by their car if it's not in the mood).
For someone to get electrocuted, the current needs to flow through their body. Electricity always follows the path of least resistance, so there's basically no way to do that from upstairs.
If you attach both terminals of the battery (or a stripped extension wire) that wouldn't do it. Assuming the pole is conductive, the electricity would just go into the screws, into the pole, across to the other screw and out. If the pole isn't conductive it would probably do nothing at all. Maybe the floor is conductive, in which case it would go into the screw, through the floor/ceiling and out the other screw. There's just no way to do it where the electricity flows from a screw, down the pole, into the body of the pole dancer, then somehow back out and up to the battery.
Even if the person who owned the stripper pole wanted to electrocute themselves it would be difficult. Assuming the pole is conductive, if you attached one electrode near the ceiling and one near the floor, the electricity would just flow through the pole. It wouldn't make a detour to go through the body of the pole dancer. You'd basically have to clip one side of the battery to your toe, the other side to the stripper pole, and then grab the pole with your hands. And, even then, it might not do it -- you'd have to have sweaty hands and toes to make the path through your body conductive.
I really hate the movie trope where people can get electrocuted by stepping into a puddle that has something electricity-related in it. It's almost as bad as the trope that you get blasted backwards if you're hit by a bullet / shotgun blast.
Incorrect.
stripper poles are tubes and spin on bearings. follow these instructions and you can most certainly electrocute someone with one.
What makes you think that will work? That sounds like a very complicated way of just connecting the common to live with no human in the loop.
Ikr, this at least makes the pole get hot because current is actually running through part of it.
But at no point is a human part of the path of least resistance for the electricity.
You've put a worrying amount of thought into this.
🤣 I really didn't. I used to be a contractor and just understand how this stuff works.
best way to not kill yourself is to know the thousands of ways to die.
Not unless the person two floors downstairs is in on it
Nah, that wouldn't. But if you connected just the hot line (right eye of the outlet smiley face) that would do it. Wouldn't recommend it because you could kill them by electrocution or kill even more people with a fire.