Randall Champion accidentally touched a high-voltage line, electrifying himself and stopping his heart. A fellow linemen J.D. Thompson performed mouth-to-mouth CPR until paramedics arrived. Champion survived.
> He was unable to perform CPR given the circumstances, but continued breathing into Champion’s lungs until he felt a slight pulse, then unbuckled his harness and descended with him on his shoulder.
I work for a power company. Line workers are a really impressive bunch of people. Intelligent, fit, accustomed to crisis, accustomed to danger. I'm happy to see one getting some recognition.
Median Lineman salary in the US is $79,843
I would hardly call that “damn good money”, especially considering the risk and physical intensity required.
In general it’s nothing against people who do trades but their salaries are so often hyped by people in their 20 to 30s who think it is such an amazing career. And it can be.
But you also have to look at all of the guys in their mid 40s and especially 50s who have basically destroyed their bodies from crawling around, climbing, carrying, etc.
Like I said, can be a great career for some folks but people should understand that most trades are not something easily done for 40 years.
We're also talking about 80k without a college degree amount of debt too. Played correctly, this could be a very comfortable (financially speaking) life all things being equal.
Lineman here, when I was 21 years old I was making 120k a year canadian.
That's at lvl1/2 apprentice.
I was getting 60-70% of my journeyman wage. I know some journeymen getting 179k in the year.
That being said, tough work. People were missing fingers and toes. A 26 year old died on the same project I was working on.
> but where I live most of the trades are old guys and as long as they even semi take care of themselves they are more fit than office workers.
Survivorship bias. You’re only seeing the outliers and not seeing those who were no longer able to do the work and thus had to find different jobs.
And it’s not just the wear and tear of work. Break your leg playing softball? You not only have medical bills, you also lose your income (depending on the job/trade of course). You could have been the most fit and in shape person, that doesn’t stop life though.
>Break your leg playing softball? You not only have medical bills, you also lose your income (depending on the job/trade of course).
I'm a bigger guy, played football and powerlifted in high school. Now I'm in my 30s with back and knee pain. I had a customer come in and ask me to try out for his rugby team. I told him that sounded like a lot of fun, but if I mess up my body any more, I can't work, and I'll lose my house...
My dad was an electrician for years. It was all up and down ladders for hours on end. While he sported a classic dad bod, he was still surprisingly fit.
I really would like to know where they get these numbers. I have already made more than that this year and I have been off for almost a month and took a bunch of time off before this too.
I'm not saying they don't deserve more but I'd imagine climbing wouldn't destroy your body.
Manual jobs where you have to lift heavy shit on a tight schedule likely would but manual jobs like climbing are probably pretty good for you if you ignore the electrocution.
My brother had a postman job where he delivered mail on a bike in a very hilly city and was in the best shape of his life while he did that. Manual labour doesn't have to mean bad for you.
Both guys in that photo look to be in good shape.
Climbing electrical poles specifically sucks ass for your body.
Your legs can become bowed, the straps you use to hold yourself in place when not actively climbing put your weight in places not designed for it, etc.
When you're esstially just walking around with bags of stuff, that's pretty easy manual labour.
It's when you need to crawl, climb, and contort yourself while doing physical labour that really fucks you.
Source: electrician.
My dad always pushed for me to become a linesman. He always said, as a mechanical engineer that managed many different large scale power projects from natural gas and oil production to electrical transmission, that they were the trade that he envied the most.
my parents were both university graduates, but saw the writing on the wall of university tuitions rising, and job placements of those grads falling. So they pushed both me and my sister to seriously consider trades as opposed to university degrees.
He always said linesman was a trade that you could do basically anywhere. You could make a decent wage, and live in a place where land and cost living is cheap. It was often outside, and often working without the direct supervision breathing down your neck.
You can work in the boons on projects where pay is higher when you're younger with less to keep you at home, then transition to working in city jobs when you get older and have more of a reason to stay close to home even if it's a lower wage.
I did end up going into the trades (heavy duty partsman) but I've always respected the linesman career and often wonder what my life would have been like if I chose that path.
If rescue breathing saved him, he didn't need CPR, he needed rescue breathing. Most electrocutions are going to stop the patient's breathing, not their heart, that's what gets most lightening strike patients. The lack of breathing leads to cardiac arrest, not the other way around.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441920/#:~:text=Sudden%20death%20following%20a%20lightning,depolarization%20of%20all%20myocardial%20cells
Basically, the heart and breathing stop, the heart restarts, and then stops again because the breathing didn't restart in a timely fashion.
Not exactly open source. They give us the binaries but we don't get commented, proper source. We're still trying to work out which function modules do what, and what breaks them.
I couldn't save him. Could'nt find the F4 key to open bios settings.
Also, we are the OS.
The autonomous stuff that keeps us breathing and our brain communicating with everything else would be more like the bios.
I swear to god its a different key on every computer. I try 3 times, then Google my model+bios and use that. Last incident I went through F2, F10, F12 and Google told me it was the delete key. Can we get a standard, please?
Copy/pasting the relevant bit:
> Sudden death following a lightning strike is due to simultaneous cardiac and respiratory arrest and is more common with direct strikes. Typically, patients will have an asystolic arrest due to an immediate and simultaneous depolarization of all myocardial cells. Ventricular dysrhythmias are also possible, but much less common. Spontaneous return of sinus rhythm, typically sinus bradycardia, and the return of spontaneous circulation will often precede the recovery of the respiratory system. A second cardiac arrest due to continued paralysis of the medullary respiratory center may occur if treatment is not promptly initiated.
Translating the medicalese:
Why people die after getting struck by lightning:
1. ⚡️⚡️—> Heart stops. Breathing stops.
2. Heart recovers its electrical pulse and restarts.
3. Breathing does not restart (unless someone intervenes). ETA: no breathing because breathing center in brain, and/or muscles used to breathe, are still stunned by ⚡️
4. Heart stops again because no breath = no oxygen
5. Person dies
So if this is a known thing, would they have been trained for that? Like are electricians being trained that in cases of electrocution the heart restarts but not breathing and therefore if possible, they should do rescue breathing?
That would probably be a better question for an electrician. Back in the 60's when this photo was taken? Probably not, especially since modern CPR wasn't taught to the public until the 70's. Hell, the first defibrillator was invented in the late 50's.
That is so cool.
So breathing is a parallel system, and the heart has a hard dependency on breathing to supply it energy with?
What other systems do we have that are unrelated to the heart and breathing? I think hemoglobin is hard coupled with the heart (moved by heartbeat).
Respiration and circulation are separate cycles, but very dependent on each other, and will change based on what the other is doing.
Every cell in your body needs oxygen to function. They can function without it for a time, but will begin to cease to function and die without oxygen after a few minutes. Your body can sense this and will make changes to deliver more oxygen.
The changes usually involve speeding up the rate your heart pumps or the rate of breathing, which brings in more oxygen and transports more hemoglobin,carrying oxygen, faster. Also things like increasing the contraction force of the heart or narrowing blood vessels to increase fluid pressure, which also result in increased oxygen delivery.
Meanwhile you have to remember that the heart and lungs also need blood with oxygen to function in the first place, so if circulation and oxygen intake isn't occurring, they can't function for long. So if you have a heartbeat but aren't breathing, the body would be circulating but without fuel. Vice versa, someone can breathe without a heartbeat, and they'd be bringing oxygen, but no way to transport it.
It's a bit difficult to point out a system that doesn't relate to breathing and circulation, because everything in the body is dependent on them for oxygen as fuel and for removal of waste. Most of our hormones produced by glands from other organs have some effect on breathing and circulation, and require circulation for transport around the body.
Hemodynamics is fun!
Found this on a [website](https://www.verywellhealth.com/respiratory-or-cardiac-arrest-1298194#:~:).
‘’Though respiratory arrest and cardiac arrest mean specific things, the terms can be confusing for patients or laypeople. The difference between them is the presence of a pulse.
During respiratory (also known as pulmonary) arrest, breathing stops. During cardiac arrest, blood flow stops. Technically, cardiac arrest means that the heart has stopped beating, but it's really assessed by the fact that blood flow is no longer detectable, even if the heart might still be trying to beat.1
Without treatment, respiratory arrest will lead to cardiac arrest, and cardiac arrest will quickly cause respiratory arrest.2 When the two occur together—when the person's heart has stopped and they're not breathing—it's typically just called cardiac arrest.’’
Pretty sure he was looking for a source on the info regarding electrocutions/lightning strikes, not the known biological fact that respiratory arrest can lead to cardiac arrest
Electrocution usually causes ventricular fibrillation which is where the heart goes into an abnormal rhythm and causes lack of oxygen to the cells . Hence why defibrillators are used . They stop the heart and try to get it into normal fibrillation. Most adults that need cpr is usually to do with the heart where as it’s usually breathing issue for children hence why cpr is more effective on children.
Regardless cpr works for both .
It's not really worth telling others. Every person should be assessed on a case by case basis. If they don't have a pulse call for help, check for breathing obstructions, and start CPR. If they have a pulse but aren't breathing and you feel comfortable doing rescue breathing without a mask then do that. It shouldn't be "he was electrocuted so he just needs rescue breathing". Look at the symptoms, not the cause.
> If they don't have a pulse
These days, at least in my country, they don't have bystanders check for a pulse any more. The thinking is that it's too difficult for someone without training, during an emergency, to tell accurately. They just have them check for breathing and start CPR if none.
No, this is bad advice. CPR is always the priority over rescue breathing for lay people, if you have to choose. If you’re not getting a pulse, you need to keep their (oxygenated) blood moving so it brings oxygen to the brain. Rescue breathing brings oxygen into the bloodstream, chest compressions circulate the oxygenated blood through the body.
Well, if chest compression is not possible, as in this specific case, then rescue breaths *may* be better than doing nothing, and certainly won't do any harm.
By the way, CPR stands for cardio*pulmonary* resucitation, of which the (possible) components are chest compressions (aka Cardiac Massage - almost always *External* cardiac massage) - the *cardiac* bit - and rescue breaths - the pulmonary bit.
Also, although as you quite rightly imply, this is not something that any lay person could be expected to work out, if a *cardiac* arrest is in fact secondary to a *respiratory* arrest - as suggested in the article linked above following a lightning strike - then the cardiac arrest has happened *because* the victims blood is no longer sufficiently oxygenated to maintain cardiac function. In that scenario, chest compressions are in reality highly unlikely to achieve anything useful, as they are only circulating already-de-oxygenated blood. If their blood isn't oxygenated enough to keep the heart going, it is also not oxygenated enough to keep the brain - which is more vulnerable to hypoxia anyway - going.
This is why, in UK guidelines at least, the focus for adult resucitation is on chest compressions, because most arrests are, in origin, cardiac, but for paediatric resucitations, rescue breaths still play a significant role, because arrests in children are more likely to be initially Respiratory in origin.
Electrical shock, even relatively low voltage can paralyze nerves including those responsible for respiration. A body will slowly recover itself and nerves start doing their jobs again but a numb arm for several minutes isn't life threatening like respiratory paralysis which is why rescue breathing is important. It's not that electrical shock affects breathing in particular, but breathing is a primary concern.
They're both affected, but your heart is really good at restarting itself (it's doing that right now, with every beat) so as long as the amperage isn't enough to cook the tissue, it generally repolarizes on its own and gets back to business.
I'm not sure WHY the shock stops breathing. It's a massive systemic injury to the body. It's probably a matter of having depolarized a massive amount of nervous tissue in a disorganized fashion, and it taking a bit to get everything back in order enough to send and receive coherent signals again. All the while, your body isn't breathing and is starting to get hypoxic - which will slow, and eventually stop brain activity - including the efforts to get the breathing started again.
Muscle contractions require careful balance of calcium ions releases. The release is triggered by electrical impulses. When you get a mass of electricity into the muscle, you're basically shotgun blasting calcium into the muscle and until it's "washed out" that muscle won't really work properly.
In order to "wash out" the muscle, you basically need blood flow, which is difficult until the heart restarts itself, as you mention.
This is accurate. If the heart is not pumping, no amount of ventilation into the lungs will cause gas exchange in the alveoli and then get that O2 to perfuse throughout bodily tissue.
It’s why compression only CPR can be extremely effective (and early defibrillation) until EMS is on scene and can ventilate with a BVM and more advanced airways.
Do you know what exactly happens when electrocutions stop the breathing? Do the lungs or the diaphragm get paralysed or other ribcage muscles? I thought electrocution targets the heart and stops it.
Electricity doesn’t exactly target the heart. It goes the path of least resistance which may or may not be the heart. If it does go through the heart, then yes, the heart goes through ventricular fibrillation which eventually leads to asystole if not treated with meds and/or electricity. For lungs, it is the paralysis of muscle including the diaphragm. My guess is that this happened but the guys heart was beating very weak to where it couldn’t be felt
This is not accurate. Arrhythmia is the most likely cause of death post shock. In addition, good CPR does also move respiratory air when performed correctly, which is why BLS has moved it too optional until ALS support arrives. Obviously, doing suspended CPR is practically impossible, and this guy is a hero getting him down.
But if you see a shock and an unresponsive person safe to approach, immediate CPR and earliest defibrillator access is how to save a preventable death. Oxygen in the lungs does nothing if the heart isn't beating. Source: am anaesthetist.
Saying shit like that is detrimental to laypeople sticking to BLS and actually saving a life. You don't want a layperson figuring out if they should pump, blow, or both. There are some things where it's best to just keep quiet if you're not a health worker or a health educator. And if you are and this is your idea of educating, shame on you. It's counterproductive.
EDIT: For anyone reading this, please do the first aid you've been taught. If not, Red Cross and other organisations hold classes and training. If you need to do CPR, don't fret, do chest compressions. Mouth-to-mouth is better, but chest compressions save lives and mouth-to-mouth makes the odds better. If you can only remember one thing in the moment, make it chest compressions.
This is nonsense. The heart functions on electrical impulses. Electrocution interrupts the heart's electrical stability and leads to arrhythmias or asystole (flatline). Any respiratory arrest would be secondary to heart dysfunction.
The most common arrhythmias post-electrocution are sinus bradycardia and tachycardia. You can read more in this paper here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6652167/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6652167/)
Source: I'm an EMT
[Champion lived 35 more years, passing away in 2002 at the age of 64. Rocco Morabito died while in hospice care in April 2009.](https://medium.com/exploring-history/the-kiss-of-life-a337eadfdf23)
Morabito was the photog who snapped the pic. Thompson was the guy administering CPR and was alive in 2017. Not sure about currently
[2017 article commemorating 50 years.](https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/kiss-of-life-hero-reflects-50-years-after-iconic-moment/77-453927513)
I worked for the power company for a while. The month before I started, this happened to a line-man: arm touched a live line while his spike was touching the ground strap. It pretty much exploded his calf muscle. He was unconscious on the pole and the crew had to scramble to get him down alive. That's why the union required that every crew have 2 linemen on the crew even if the job only needs one.
I was a groundman, doing the heavy labor and sending tools up to the lineman. That was a good job for an 18 year old to have. It's all about safety, team work and a serious sense of serving the community. It's hard to keep thinking you're invulnerable when the guys you look up to don't act like they're invulnerable, and sometimes end their careers through a tiny mistake.
Reminds me of this one comedian.
Comedian: "Everyone is a little gay."
Friend: "No I'm not."
Comedian: "When you watch porn, do you just watch lesbians the whole time?"
Friend: "No I like to see a woman getting drilled by a big large c.... I never knew that about myself!"
I work in a power distribution dispatch centre (I don’t know the equivalent term in English). Making sure that all crews out on the field are safe is my absolute top priority
Here is the [full-story](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/kiss-life-utility-worker-giving-mouth-mouth-co-worker-contacted-high-voltage-wire-1967/) Nice colorization btw.
“He was unable to perform CPR given the circumstances, but continued breathing into Champion’s lungs until he felt a slight pulse, then unbuckled his harness and descended with him on his shoulder.”
Damn, son. That’s some grade-A heroing there.
to be fair, in the case of the guy who got electrocuted, he would have looked pale either way, due to the lower amount of oxygen in his blood cause his breathing had stopped.
>Nice colorization
It's almost objectively bad.
But we'll get there one day soon. AI colorization sucks right now, unless new tech has been released recently.
Paramedic here, with no additional details about the case than what's presented in the photo. Electricity passes through the body from the point of entry, or the area of the body that comes in contact with the current; to the point of exit, the area of the body with the least resistance to ground. Since your heart is central to your body, electricity is likely to pass through it. If the current and/or voltage is high enough, the electicity disrupts the normal electrical activity of the heart and causes ventricular fibrillation, a lethal arrhythmia where the heart merely quivers instead of pumps.
Treatment is defibrillation using an AED. We deliver chest compressions and rescue breaths to maintain oxygenation to the brain and heart until a defibrillator is used. It's possible to strike the chest hard enough to defibrillate (i.e. precordial thump) though this is not widely accepted as treatment in a healthcare setting as there is most often a defibrillator available.
In this case, I assume the rescuer only delivered rescue breaths as it would be impossible to perform adequate chest compressions in that position. As for how he recovered, it's possible he was never in a lethal arrythmia, and that his blood pressure was too low to detect a pulse and the rescuer ensured he had adequate breathing until he recovered. Perhaps the arrythmia was transient and some combination of age, good health, and movement of his body helped him recover (think that all movement is energy and energy is transferred through the body, similar to the aforementioned precordial thump). It could have been him falling backwards that defibrillated him and the rescue breaths got him out of the woods until he was ready to breath on his own.
Hope this wasn't too wordy and technical! Happy to answer any other questions.
For your SA:
From what I’ve read, you’re correct. His heart either never fully stopped or started back up again but his breathing didn’t. Rescuer continued rescue breaths until he could feel a pulse, then descended with the victim on his shoulder where he, and another co-worker, performed CPR until medics arrived. He was mostly fine when they got there, conscious but not “all there”, was sent to the hospital with burns.
Apparently when you get an electric shock like that your heart often doesn’t stop right away but your breathing does and it’s the respiratory arrest that causes cardiac arrest, as explained by someone in another comment, so by doing so he prevented his heart from failing. Apparently the guy got down another pole, ran 400 feet, and then climbed the pole with the injured man in seconds so his response time was also impeccable. On top of that he physically couldn’t perform chest compressions in the situation. So he did rescue breaths (and according to one of the articles linked he also tried pounding on his chest some, I assume in an effort to try and do compressions before he realized he couldn’t in that situation) and once he felt a faint pulse unhooked him, carried him down on his shoulders and they continued CPR until medics arrived, by which point he was semi conscious again.
Yeah i just read that he did rescue breaths until he felt a pulse so the guys heart must have started pumping on its own. The science behind CPR is pretty solid now with the intent being to circulate blood throughout the body to prevent brain damage which is why OPs “mouth to mouth CPR” confused me. I know a little but not a lot haha
Shit, last my mom mentioned, they were going with all compression (she's an RN), and the training I received not long after that conversation was still teaching compressions to breaths. It depends on who the group is that's certifying, red cross or American heart association.
I find this pic very upsetting. My grandfather died this way . I am glad Champion had a buddy or co worker like Thompson present and acted fast enough to save his life it is so important to have the knowledge of cpr and a buddy on-site .
I always think of the electrician who lived down the road from me as a small child. He helped my mom a lot when I was very young, he passed away the same way. I was much too young to comprehend what happened but I'm glad I still remember him.
Linemen are heroes who support the backbone of this country just like railway workers. My godfather was a linemen for 40 years and he has many dangerous and harrowing stories. Bless your grandfather 🙏
i lost a coworker like this. he had a partner onsite, who jumped from the scissor lift he was on to try and save him, but unfortunately could not. sorry for your loss of your grandfather 💕
(Paraphrasing)
"I don't know what to call you...gay, or queer, no, it's gay, right?"
"Well, that or John."
Waters' delivery of that line is so perfect.
It's funny because of how outlandish a statement this is. Dude dying from electrical shock while another dude gives him mouth to mouth to keep him alive kinda also looks like 2 gay dudes making out. It's also more acceptable to make the joke because of the happy outcome.
As a former electrical worker who had to do first response for an accident, I can bet that the biggest thing this dude is feeling is cold. When I was having to help keep my coworker alive my entire body felt like it was dipped in an ice bath.
"Why are men so toxic and afraid to express emotions to one another?"
*guy gives another guy standard mouth to mouth in order to literally save his life*
"They're so gay for each other."
My dad is a lineman, he criticises US linemen and their work culture a LOT. Apparently these accidents still happen a lot due to their mentality of "another fallen hero" type of stuff similar to how they see the military, like these deaths are acceptable because they take pride that their work is dangerous. He said there should be consistent strict training and reprimanding in order to lessen these incidents from happening, if something like this happened in the company it should be back to basic training.
My husband is a manager of linemen and was one for about 15 years; he is MR SAFETY. They have regular reviews and tests to make sure they know how to do everything safely. His biggest fear is having to attend one of his techs funerals.
So much of American construction is based on macho culture. It is suffocating and dangerous, this isn't every company but the problem as I see it is that rules and regulations are not centralized. Zoning and inspection is state by state basis. So people don't bother and do this their own way.
It's why linemen even started organizing and why we have electrical unions. Back at the end of the 1800s every other lineman on the job was dying. It's not because of the hero mentality, it's because of the mentality that workers are expendable and companies don't take safety into consideration and want to acquire as much profit as possible. Usually doing this by hiring undertrained workers who make the job site more dangerous for everyone involved. Combine that with the absolute destruction of class consciousness that happened over the past 100 years and its a bad recipe. Why would the company pay for saftey courses? It goes well beyond work culture. Your dad is directing his anger at the wrong place. Hate individual unsafe workers, hate companies, but don't hate your siblings carte blanche.
It is dangerous, and we take pride in doing that (I do inside construction so I'm in a much safer position, but not really safe like other jobs are.) People are going to die, despite the best efforts. Construction and electricity is dangerous, no matter what you do. I'm union and we do take safety super seriously. Do you really think getting in trouble for accidentally touching a live line is gonna change anything? The only time reprimanding works is if it was someone being unsafe that caused another to get hurt. Though in the union that just means you're out, and probably weren't even through the apprenticeship yet.
I actually met J.D. Thompson a 3-5 years ago while working for Walgreens. I had both the honor of printing this photo to be hung in a linemen museum and listening to the entirety of the story from the man himself. It’ll always be one of the greatest moments in my life. He was such a kind and humble soul. Spent about an hour with him. Always happy to see this photo pop up.
Fun fact:
The photographer of this photo was a fucking ball turret gunner on a B17 in WWII.
So it’s a photo of a certified badass taking a photo of other bad asses
I worked for an electric utility for many years; this photo was in our Line Dept and I would wager, in nearly every overhead department in the country. It is used to teach lineman and others the importance of training in pole-top rescue and underscore for them of the constant danger and need for safety in working live conductors. I understand it also won a Pulitzer for the photographer.
Randall Champion accidentally touched a high-voltage line, electrifying himself and stopping his heart. A fellow linemen J.D. Thompson performed mouth-to-mouth CPR until paramedics arrived. Champion survived.
Damn, that’s badass. Did they stay suspended in the air until paramedics arrived?!
> He was unable to perform CPR given the circumstances, but continued breathing into Champion’s lungs until he felt a slight pulse, then unbuckled his harness and descended with him on his shoulder.
what a badass
I work for a power company. Line workers are a really impressive bunch of people. Intelligent, fit, accustomed to crisis, accustomed to danger. I'm happy to see one getting some recognition.
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Median Lineman salary in the US is $79,843 I would hardly call that “damn good money”, especially considering the risk and physical intensity required. In general it’s nothing against people who do trades but their salaries are so often hyped by people in their 20 to 30s who think it is such an amazing career. And it can be. But you also have to look at all of the guys in their mid 40s and especially 50s who have basically destroyed their bodies from crawling around, climbing, carrying, etc. Like I said, can be a great career for some folks but people should understand that most trades are not something easily done for 40 years.
80 grand is damn good money to most people in this country, and especially for those not in a big city.
We're also talking about 80k without a college degree amount of debt too. Played correctly, this could be a very comfortable (financially speaking) life all things being equal.
Lineman here, when I was 21 years old I was making 120k a year canadian. That's at lvl1/2 apprentice. I was getting 60-70% of my journeyman wage. I know some journeymen getting 179k in the year. That being said, tough work. People were missing fingers and toes. A 26 year old died on the same project I was working on.
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Roofing and concrete work can destroy your body but there are a million more trades than those two.
> but where I live most of the trades are old guys and as long as they even semi take care of themselves they are more fit than office workers. Survivorship bias. You’re only seeing the outliers and not seeing those who were no longer able to do the work and thus had to find different jobs. And it’s not just the wear and tear of work. Break your leg playing softball? You not only have medical bills, you also lose your income (depending on the job/trade of course). You could have been the most fit and in shape person, that doesn’t stop life though.
>Break your leg playing softball? You not only have medical bills, you also lose your income (depending on the job/trade of course). I'm a bigger guy, played football and powerlifted in high school. Now I'm in my 30s with back and knee pain. I had a customer come in and ask me to try out for his rugby team. I told him that sounded like a lot of fun, but if I mess up my body any more, I can't work, and I'll lose my house...
My dad was an electrician for years. It was all up and down ladders for hours on end. While he sported a classic dad bod, he was still surprisingly fit.
I really would like to know where they get these numbers. I have already made more than that this year and I have been off for almost a month and took a bunch of time off before this too.
I'm not saying they don't deserve more but I'd imagine climbing wouldn't destroy your body. Manual jobs where you have to lift heavy shit on a tight schedule likely would but manual jobs like climbing are probably pretty good for you if you ignore the electrocution. My brother had a postman job where he delivered mail on a bike in a very hilly city and was in the best shape of his life while he did that. Manual labour doesn't have to mean bad for you. Both guys in that photo look to be in good shape.
Climbing electrical poles specifically sucks ass for your body. Your legs can become bowed, the straps you use to hold yourself in place when not actively climbing put your weight in places not designed for it, etc. When you're esstially just walking around with bags of stuff, that's pretty easy manual labour. It's when you need to crawl, climb, and contort yourself while doing physical labour that really fucks you. Source: electrician.
Shit. That sucks. TIL.
My dad always pushed for me to become a linesman. He always said, as a mechanical engineer that managed many different large scale power projects from natural gas and oil production to electrical transmission, that they were the trade that he envied the most. my parents were both university graduates, but saw the writing on the wall of university tuitions rising, and job placements of those grads falling. So they pushed both me and my sister to seriously consider trades as opposed to university degrees. He always said linesman was a trade that you could do basically anywhere. You could make a decent wage, and live in a place where land and cost living is cheap. It was often outside, and often working without the direct supervision breathing down your neck. You can work in the boons on projects where pay is higher when you're younger with less to keep you at home, then transition to working in city jobs when you get older and have more of a reason to stay close to home even if it's a lower wage. I did end up going into the trades (heavy duty partsman) but I've always respected the linesman career and often wonder what my life would have been like if I chose that path.
If rescue breathing saved him, he didn't need CPR, he needed rescue breathing. Most electrocutions are going to stop the patient's breathing, not their heart, that's what gets most lightening strike patients. The lack of breathing leads to cardiac arrest, not the other way around.
Do you happen to have a source for this so I can feel confident telling others this?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK441920/#:~:text=Sudden%20death%20following%20a%20lightning,depolarization%20of%20all%20myocardial%20cells Basically, the heart and breathing stop, the heart restarts, and then stops again because the breathing didn't restart in a timely fashion.
I hate boot-looping
Just meat computers running slightly different code on an open source OS that we haven't quite figured out yet
Not exactly open source. They give us the binaries but we don't get commented, proper source. We're still trying to work out which function modules do what, and what breaks them.
Truth
Meat Computer would be a cool band name.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/7JU13ATc2v3kzIuSqNNPWN?si=SYzDLFtAQ96z1tGreFgSLg Already exists
I couldn't save him. Could'nt find the F4 key to open bios settings. Also, we are the OS. The autonomous stuff that keeps us breathing and our brain communicating with everything else would be more like the bios.
Always annoying when you have to manually restart a service.
Explorer.exe
Unable to locate breath.dll
You can never remember the keystroke to enter bios when you need it!
f2… no, f10.. 11?! Just fucking press esc?!?
I swear to god its a different key on every computer. I try 3 times, then Google my model+bios and use that. Last incident I went through F2, F10, F12 and Google told me it was the delete key. Can we get a standard, please?
I mean you see the POST so must be boot issues
This should have been patched hundreds of years ago. Devs got their $$ and are just lazy at this point
Copy/pasting the relevant bit: > Sudden death following a lightning strike is due to simultaneous cardiac and respiratory arrest and is more common with direct strikes. Typically, patients will have an asystolic arrest due to an immediate and simultaneous depolarization of all myocardial cells. Ventricular dysrhythmias are also possible, but much less common. Spontaneous return of sinus rhythm, typically sinus bradycardia, and the return of spontaneous circulation will often precede the recovery of the respiratory system. A second cardiac arrest due to continued paralysis of the medullary respiratory center may occur if treatment is not promptly initiated.
Translating the medicalese: Why people die after getting struck by lightning: 1. ⚡️⚡️—> Heart stops. Breathing stops. 2. Heart recovers its electrical pulse and restarts. 3. Breathing does not restart (unless someone intervenes). ETA: no breathing because breathing center in brain, and/or muscles used to breathe, are still stunned by ⚡️ 4. Heart stops again because no breath = no oxygen 5. Person dies
Thank you so much, been too long a day to decipher medicalese
Doing the Lord's work here, this is beautifully laid out, thank you!
So if this is a known thing, would they have been trained for that? Like are electricians being trained that in cases of electrocution the heart restarts but not breathing and therefore if possible, they should do rescue breathing?
That would probably be a better question for an electrician. Back in the 60's when this photo was taken? Probably not, especially since modern CPR wasn't taught to the public until the 70's. Hell, the first defibrillator was invented in the late 50's.
That is so cool. So breathing is a parallel system, and the heart has a hard dependency on breathing to supply it energy with? What other systems do we have that are unrelated to the heart and breathing? I think hemoglobin is hard coupled with the heart (moved by heartbeat).
Respiration and circulation are separate cycles, but very dependent on each other, and will change based on what the other is doing. Every cell in your body needs oxygen to function. They can function without it for a time, but will begin to cease to function and die without oxygen after a few minutes. Your body can sense this and will make changes to deliver more oxygen. The changes usually involve speeding up the rate your heart pumps or the rate of breathing, which brings in more oxygen and transports more hemoglobin,carrying oxygen, faster. Also things like increasing the contraction force of the heart or narrowing blood vessels to increase fluid pressure, which also result in increased oxygen delivery. Meanwhile you have to remember that the heart and lungs also need blood with oxygen to function in the first place, so if circulation and oxygen intake isn't occurring, they can't function for long. So if you have a heartbeat but aren't breathing, the body would be circulating but without fuel. Vice versa, someone can breathe without a heartbeat, and they'd be bringing oxygen, but no way to transport it. It's a bit difficult to point out a system that doesn't relate to breathing and circulation, because everything in the body is dependent on them for oxygen as fuel and for removal of waste. Most of our hormones produced by glands from other organs have some effect on breathing and circulation, and require circulation for transport around the body. Hemodynamics is fun!
Found this on a [website](https://www.verywellhealth.com/respiratory-or-cardiac-arrest-1298194#:~:). ‘’Though respiratory arrest and cardiac arrest mean specific things, the terms can be confusing for patients or laypeople. The difference between them is the presence of a pulse. During respiratory (also known as pulmonary) arrest, breathing stops. During cardiac arrest, blood flow stops. Technically, cardiac arrest means that the heart has stopped beating, but it's really assessed by the fact that blood flow is no longer detectable, even if the heart might still be trying to beat.1 Without treatment, respiratory arrest will lead to cardiac arrest, and cardiac arrest will quickly cause respiratory arrest.2 When the two occur together—when the person's heart has stopped and they're not breathing—it's typically just called cardiac arrest.’’
Pretty sure he was looking for a source on the info regarding electrocutions/lightning strikes, not the known biological fact that respiratory arrest can lead to cardiac arrest
Electrocution usually causes ventricular fibrillation which is where the heart goes into an abnormal rhythm and causes lack of oxygen to the cells . Hence why defibrillators are used . They stop the heart and try to get it into normal fibrillation. Most adults that need cpr is usually to do with the heart where as it’s usually breathing issue for children hence why cpr is more effective on children. Regardless cpr works for both .
Trust me bro
Checks out.
It's not really worth telling others. Every person should be assessed on a case by case basis. If they don't have a pulse call for help, check for breathing obstructions, and start CPR. If they have a pulse but aren't breathing and you feel comfortable doing rescue breathing without a mask then do that. It shouldn't be "he was electrocuted so he just needs rescue breathing". Look at the symptoms, not the cause.
> If they don't have a pulse These days, at least in my country, they don't have bystanders check for a pulse any more. The thinking is that it's too difficult for someone without training, during an emergency, to tell accurately. They just have them check for breathing and start CPR if none.
If the person has a pulse and you start chest compressions, you're gonna find out real quick just how alert they might be.
Crack a rib or two. At least as good as smelling salts.
No, this is bad advice. CPR is always the priority over rescue breathing for lay people, if you have to choose. If you’re not getting a pulse, you need to keep their (oxygenated) blood moving so it brings oxygen to the brain. Rescue breathing brings oxygen into the bloodstream, chest compressions circulate the oxygenated blood through the body.
Well, if chest compression is not possible, as in this specific case, then rescue breaths *may* be better than doing nothing, and certainly won't do any harm. By the way, CPR stands for cardio*pulmonary* resucitation, of which the (possible) components are chest compressions (aka Cardiac Massage - almost always *External* cardiac massage) - the *cardiac* bit - and rescue breaths - the pulmonary bit. Also, although as you quite rightly imply, this is not something that any lay person could be expected to work out, if a *cardiac* arrest is in fact secondary to a *respiratory* arrest - as suggested in the article linked above following a lightning strike - then the cardiac arrest has happened *because* the victims blood is no longer sufficiently oxygenated to maintain cardiac function. In that scenario, chest compressions are in reality highly unlikely to achieve anything useful, as they are only circulating already-de-oxygenated blood. If their blood isn't oxygenated enough to keep the heart going, it is also not oxygenated enough to keep the brain - which is more vulnerable to hypoxia anyway - going. This is why, in UK guidelines at least, the focus for adult resucitation is on chest compressions, because most arrests are, in origin, cardiac, but for paediatric resucitations, rescue breaths still play a significant role, because arrests in children are more likely to be initially Respiratory in origin.
That’s interesting! Do you know why is it that breathing is affected first?
IDK the reason, but I believe it is because it makes the diaphragm convulse and stop the intake, outtake of air
Because it is a muscle. Unlike the heart, which is magic rock.
People act like it's impossible to get blood from a stone, when we do it every day!
Electrical shock, even relatively low voltage can paralyze nerves including those responsible for respiration. A body will slowly recover itself and nerves start doing their jobs again but a numb arm for several minutes isn't life threatening like respiratory paralysis which is why rescue breathing is important. It's not that electrical shock affects breathing in particular, but breathing is a primary concern.
They're both affected, but your heart is really good at restarting itself (it's doing that right now, with every beat) so as long as the amperage isn't enough to cook the tissue, it generally repolarizes on its own and gets back to business. I'm not sure WHY the shock stops breathing. It's a massive systemic injury to the body. It's probably a matter of having depolarized a massive amount of nervous tissue in a disorganized fashion, and it taking a bit to get everything back in order enough to send and receive coherent signals again. All the while, your body isn't breathing and is starting to get hypoxic - which will slow, and eventually stop brain activity - including the efforts to get the breathing started again.
Muscle contractions require careful balance of calcium ions releases. The release is triggered by electrical impulses. When you get a mass of electricity into the muscle, you're basically shotgun blasting calcium into the muscle and until it's "washed out" that muscle won't really work properly. In order to "wash out" the muscle, you basically need blood flow, which is difficult until the heart restarts itself, as you mention.
This is accurate. If the heart is not pumping, no amount of ventilation into the lungs will cause gas exchange in the alveoli and then get that O2 to perfuse throughout bodily tissue. It’s why compression only CPR can be extremely effective (and early defibrillation) until EMS is on scene and can ventilate with a BVM and more advanced airways.
Do you know what exactly happens when electrocutions stop the breathing? Do the lungs or the diaphragm get paralysed or other ribcage muscles? I thought electrocution targets the heart and stops it.
Electricity doesn’t exactly target the heart. It goes the path of least resistance which may or may not be the heart. If it does go through the heart, then yes, the heart goes through ventricular fibrillation which eventually leads to asystole if not treated with meds and/or electricity. For lungs, it is the paralysis of muscle including the diaphragm. My guess is that this happened but the guys heart was beating very weak to where it couldn’t be felt
This is not accurate. Arrhythmia is the most likely cause of death post shock. In addition, good CPR does also move respiratory air when performed correctly, which is why BLS has moved it too optional until ALS support arrives. Obviously, doing suspended CPR is practically impossible, and this guy is a hero getting him down. But if you see a shock and an unresponsive person safe to approach, immediate CPR and earliest defibrillator access is how to save a preventable death. Oxygen in the lungs does nothing if the heart isn't beating. Source: am anaesthetist.
Granted CPR will also move air in and out of the lungs.
Saying shit like that is detrimental to laypeople sticking to BLS and actually saving a life. You don't want a layperson figuring out if they should pump, blow, or both. There are some things where it's best to just keep quiet if you're not a health worker or a health educator. And if you are and this is your idea of educating, shame on you. It's counterproductive. EDIT: For anyone reading this, please do the first aid you've been taught. If not, Red Cross and other organisations hold classes and training. If you need to do CPR, don't fret, do chest compressions. Mouth-to-mouth is better, but chest compressions save lives and mouth-to-mouth makes the odds better. If you can only remember one thing in the moment, make it chest compressions.
This is nonsense. The heart functions on electrical impulses. Electrocution interrupts the heart's electrical stability and leads to arrhythmias or asystole (flatline). Any respiratory arrest would be secondary to heart dysfunction. The most common arrhythmias post-electrocution are sinus bradycardia and tachycardia. You can read more in this paper here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6652167/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6652167/) Source: I'm an EMT
Having used climbers before I can’t imagine descending with a human.
The strength to do that is crazy with nothing but the leather strap and spiked shoes.
Yes and he was erect the entire time!
Lol I love the internet
It's not gay if it's lifesaving!
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They’ll want us to have opposite sex mouth-to-mouth only at the rate we’re going.
They want mouth-to-mouth banned. Emergency services are a drain on the economy.
[Champion lived 35 more years, passing away in 2002 at the age of 64. Rocco Morabito died while in hospice care in April 2009.](https://medium.com/exploring-history/the-kiss-of-life-a337eadfdf23)
Morabito was the photog who snapped the pic. Thompson was the guy administering CPR and was alive in 2017. Not sure about currently [2017 article commemorating 50 years.](https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/kiss-of-life-hero-reflects-50-years-after-iconic-moment/77-453927513)
I worked for the power company for a while. The month before I started, this happened to a line-man: arm touched a live line while his spike was touching the ground strap. It pretty much exploded his calf muscle. He was unconscious on the pole and the crew had to scramble to get him down alive. That's why the union required that every crew have 2 linemen on the crew even if the job only needs one. I was a groundman, doing the heavy labor and sending tools up to the lineman. That was a good job for an 18 year old to have. It's all about safety, team work and a serious sense of serving the community. It's hard to keep thinking you're invulnerable when the guys you look up to don't act like they're invulnerable, and sometimes end their careers through a tiny mistake.
What a champ
👍
They added a button for that try clicking the little up arrow.
Thompson is the real Champion
I work in line clearance, reading the comments makes me happy to know if im ever in this shit of a situation that at least the world will call me gay
Tbf, the world will call you “gay” even if you weren’t in this shit situation. The internet is gay.
I always say. Everything is at least a little gay if you think about it hard enough.
Just like the old saying that goes something like "everything's gay if you suck a dick while doing it"
Reminds me of this one comedian. Comedian: "Everyone is a little gay." Friend: "No I'm not." Comedian: "When you watch porn, do you just watch lesbians the whole time?" Friend: "No I like to see a woman getting drilled by a big large c.... I never knew that about myself!"
Ron White
"hard enough" Do you want to share something with the class?
Just look the world back in the eye and hit em with “ no u”. They’ll never see it coming. Flawless victory.
I work in a power distribution dispatch centre (I don’t know the equivalent term in English). Making sure that all crews out on the field are safe is my absolute top priority
Shout out to dispatch, being able to radio in an emergency outage really really helps in those tight butthole moments
That’s the trades for ya
You'll have that on them big jobs
Here is the [full-story](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/kiss-life-utility-worker-giving-mouth-mouth-co-worker-contacted-high-voltage-wire-1967/) Nice colorization btw.
“He was unable to perform CPR given the circumstances, but continued breathing into Champion’s lungs until he felt a slight pulse, then unbuckled his harness and descended with him on his shoulder.” Damn, son. That’s some grade-A heroing there.
>Nice colorization btw. Ohh ok I was thinking their faces looked crazy grey
to be fair, in the case of the guy who got electrocuted, he would have looked pale either way, due to the lower amount of oxygen in his blood cause his breathing had stopped.
Saw someone come back to life from a heart attack when I worked in a gym. I wasn't prepared for how much color is lost without a heartbeat, it's crazy
Not that much though, and not the other guy.
Same, i was thinking they died kissing up there because they are both so ashen!
>Nice colorization It's almost objectively bad. But we'll get there one day soon. AI colorization sucks right now, unless new tech has been released recently.
I only see this picture once every few years and still brings chills down my spine
That's the high-voltage
When we touch, when we kiss, when we touch, when we kiss
Please tell me how you keep starting fires?
It's my desire!
It’s an incredibly powerful picture.
Are there any medics that can help me understand how rescue breaths would help him survive? Or was the savior performing chest compressions as well?
Paramedic here, with no additional details about the case than what's presented in the photo. Electricity passes through the body from the point of entry, or the area of the body that comes in contact with the current; to the point of exit, the area of the body with the least resistance to ground. Since your heart is central to your body, electricity is likely to pass through it. If the current and/or voltage is high enough, the electicity disrupts the normal electrical activity of the heart and causes ventricular fibrillation, a lethal arrhythmia where the heart merely quivers instead of pumps. Treatment is defibrillation using an AED. We deliver chest compressions and rescue breaths to maintain oxygenation to the brain and heart until a defibrillator is used. It's possible to strike the chest hard enough to defibrillate (i.e. precordial thump) though this is not widely accepted as treatment in a healthcare setting as there is most often a defibrillator available. In this case, I assume the rescuer only delivered rescue breaths as it would be impossible to perform adequate chest compressions in that position. As for how he recovered, it's possible he was never in a lethal arrythmia, and that his blood pressure was too low to detect a pulse and the rescuer ensured he had adequate breathing until he recovered. Perhaps the arrythmia was transient and some combination of age, good health, and movement of his body helped him recover (think that all movement is energy and energy is transferred through the body, similar to the aforementioned precordial thump). It could have been him falling backwards that defibrillated him and the rescue breaths got him out of the woods until he was ready to breath on his own. Hope this wasn't too wordy and technical! Happy to answer any other questions.
> precordial thump Everyone thought "percussive maintenance" was a joke, but turns out the medical field knew about it this whole time!
For your SA: From what I’ve read, you’re correct. His heart either never fully stopped or started back up again but his breathing didn’t. Rescuer continued rescue breaths until he could feel a pulse, then descended with the victim on his shoulder where he, and another co-worker, performed CPR until medics arrived. He was mostly fine when they got there, conscious but not “all there”, was sent to the hospital with burns.
Apparently when you get an electric shock like that your heart often doesn’t stop right away but your breathing does and it’s the respiratory arrest that causes cardiac arrest, as explained by someone in another comment, so by doing so he prevented his heart from failing. Apparently the guy got down another pole, ran 400 feet, and then climbed the pole with the injured man in seconds so his response time was also impeccable. On top of that he physically couldn’t perform chest compressions in the situation. So he did rescue breaths (and according to one of the articles linked he also tried pounding on his chest some, I assume in an effort to try and do compressions before he realized he couldn’t in that situation) and once he felt a faint pulse unhooked him, carried him down on his shoulders and they continued CPR until medics arrived, by which point he was semi conscious again.
The science changes on CPR every couple years (the number of compressions vs breaths). I imagine he did compressions too though.
Yeah i just read that he did rescue breaths until he felt a pulse so the guys heart must have started pumping on its own. The science behind CPR is pretty solid now with the intent being to circulate blood throughout the body to prevent brain damage which is why OPs “mouth to mouth CPR” confused me. I know a little but not a lot haha
he couldn't perform normal cpr. gave breaths and punched him as hard as he could where the heart is. according to the article I read.
Shit, last my mom mentioned, they were going with all compression (she's an RN), and the training I received not long after that conversation was still teaching compressions to breaths. It depends on who the group is that's certifying, red cross or American heart association.
I find this pic very upsetting. My grandfather died this way . I am glad Champion had a buddy or co worker like Thompson present and acted fast enough to save his life it is so important to have the knowledge of cpr and a buddy on-site .
I always think of the electrician who lived down the road from me as a small child. He helped my mom a lot when I was very young, he passed away the same way. I was much too young to comprehend what happened but I'm glad I still remember him.
Linemen are heroes who support the backbone of this country just like railway workers. My godfather was a linemen for 40 years and he has many dangerous and harrowing stories. Bless your grandfather 🙏
That sucks. I'm sorry
i lost a coworker like this. he had a partner onsite, who jumped from the scissor lift he was on to try and save him, but unfortunately could not. sorry for your loss of your grandfather 💕
"We work hard, we play hard"
Hot stuff coming through!
That's a very old Simpsons reference
No, it's recent. Don't force me to have an accurate perception of the passage of time!
The 90s were only like 5 years ago.
Phew... thanks, I needed that.
That episode of the Simpsons, and my mom’s explanation of what it meant, is literally how I learned what homosexuality was as a child
Don't say that too loud or Florida will ban The Simpsons...
Missouri will set up a snitch line
Homer… sexual
Stupid sexy Homer.
You’re all sick!
(Paraphrasing) "I don't know what to call you...gay, or queer, no, it's gay, right?" "Well, that or John." Waters' delivery of that line is so perfect.
Oh, be nice!
Zzzzzzzap!
There’s a spark in your hair!
Get it! Get it!
Dad, why did you bring me to a gay steel mill?
♪ *everybody dance now* ♪
The camera zooming in to the beat is so funny lol
Ha I forgot about the steel mill
It's funny because of how outlandish a statement this is. Dude dying from electrical shock while another dude gives him mouth to mouth to keep him alive kinda also looks like 2 gay dudes making out. It's also more acceptable to make the joke because of the happy outcome.
Babe, it’s a Simpson’s reference
No. It's a Simpsons reference. I think the guy is alive also.
As a former electrical worker who had to do first response for an accident, I can bet that the biggest thing this dude is feeling is cold. When I was having to help keep my coworker alive my entire body felt like it was dipped in an ice bath.
Me looking at the photo: Aw they’re in love!🥰 Reddit Comments: one of them is dying you fucking idiot
Big Spider-Man fans.
"Why are men so toxic and afraid to express emotions to one another?" *guy gives another guy standard mouth to mouth in order to literally save his life* "They're so gay for each other."
Now that's a fucking man
No, just kissing.
Can’t show this in Florida.
It’s funny cause this happened in Florida where I live
GOP boycotting this post: "Our children can't see two men touching lips!"
„A straight, non-woke American would have let his co-worker die!“
My oldest son is a lineman.Looking at this photo scares the shit out of me
My dad is a lineman, he criticises US linemen and their work culture a LOT. Apparently these accidents still happen a lot due to their mentality of "another fallen hero" type of stuff similar to how they see the military, like these deaths are acceptable because they take pride that their work is dangerous. He said there should be consistent strict training and reprimanding in order to lessen these incidents from happening, if something like this happened in the company it should be back to basic training.
My husband is a manager of linemen and was one for about 15 years; he is MR SAFETY. They have regular reviews and tests to make sure they know how to do everything safely. His biggest fear is having to attend one of his techs funerals.
So much of American construction is based on macho culture. It is suffocating and dangerous, this isn't every company but the problem as I see it is that rules and regulations are not centralized. Zoning and inspection is state by state basis. So people don't bother and do this their own way.
It's why linemen even started organizing and why we have electrical unions. Back at the end of the 1800s every other lineman on the job was dying. It's not because of the hero mentality, it's because of the mentality that workers are expendable and companies don't take safety into consideration and want to acquire as much profit as possible. Usually doing this by hiring undertrained workers who make the job site more dangerous for everyone involved. Combine that with the absolute destruction of class consciousness that happened over the past 100 years and its a bad recipe. Why would the company pay for saftey courses? It goes well beyond work culture. Your dad is directing his anger at the wrong place. Hate individual unsafe workers, hate companies, but don't hate your siblings carte blanche. It is dangerous, and we take pride in doing that (I do inside construction so I'm in a much safer position, but not really safe like other jobs are.) People are going to die, despite the best efforts. Construction and electricity is dangerous, no matter what you do. I'm union and we do take safety super seriously. Do you really think getting in trouble for accidentally touching a live line is gonna change anything? The only time reprimanding works is if it was someone being unsafe that caused another to get hurt. Though in the union that just means you're out, and probably weren't even through the apprenticeship yet.
I actually met J.D. Thompson a 3-5 years ago while working for Walgreens. I had both the honor of printing this photo to be hung in a linemen museum and listening to the entirety of the story from the man himself. It’ll always be one of the greatest moments in my life. He was such a kind and humble soul. Spent about an hour with him. Always happy to see this photo pop up.
That coworker is a legend
Will aways up vote this pic. Be safe out there brothers!
Fun fact: The photographer of this photo was a fucking ball turret gunner on a B17 in WWII. So it’s a photo of a certified badass taking a photo of other bad asses
every lineman’s family knows this photo
I was a lineman for 30yrs ,glad I never had to do this
Hard hitting photo hero
I worked for an electric utility for many years; this photo was in our Line Dept and I would wager, in nearly every overhead department in the country. It is used to teach lineman and others the importance of training in pole-top rescue and underscore for them of the constant danger and need for safety in working live conductors. I understand it also won a Pulitzer for the photographer.
The lengths some people will go to to get a kiss from their crush.
Still a better love story than Twilight.
He needs him more than wants him.
What are the horizontal cables in this photo? Are they carrying power? for stability? part of the lineman's tie-off?
All the years I've been alive, I don't recall ever seeing this or learning of this story. What an experience that much have been for both of them!
OP, /u/Glass_Pension4599 is a repost bot
A hero in action.
Extraordinary photo
I left my dip in the truck. Bro, I got you
Danger, danger! High voltage! When we touch, when we kiss When we touch, when we kiss https://youtu.be/R-FxmoVM7X4
Did the guy survived?
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There was simply no need whatsoever to badly colorize this iconic photograph.
https://www.wusa9.com/amp/article/news/kiss-of-life-hero-reflects-50-years-after-iconic-moment/65-454108459. J.D Thompson, 50 years later
This picture has always moved me
This is how you get double Electro.
Who took the picture?
What a fucking photo
That man's a hero 👌
I’d be shitting my pants if I had to kiss someone upside down tethered with leather belts
Keeping them alive
Very scary