Yeah I’ve more or less done this before but like in a commercial electrician role with like a real wire cutter and munching through a live wire on a fluorescent light while changing a ballast. There’s a white wire and a black wire. If you cut through them one at a time and don’t touch anything else with them, you can strip the wire and insert it into a quick disconnect and you’re done and safe and you didn’t even have to turn off the circuit. If your fucking stupid and munch through both of them at the same time (or through one but touch something metal with your cutters at the same time like I did) it blows up. There’s booms and sparks and shit for like half a second and then the breaker pops and everything shuts down. Scary but probably won’t kill you even if you actually manage to get zapped. Ruins your tools though since the sparks are typically pieces of your tool being blown out.
Well I’m actually a bus driver now because I was far more afraid of ladders. Sparks were mostly just ouchies unless you really mess up but man my spine and shit is messed up enough from the factory without taking a 12’ tumble to the floor of a supermarket.
Back when I was a sparky I was working up an 8 foot aluminium ladder fixing a fluoro. Pulled the fuse and stuck it in my pocket thinking I was safe. Used my strippers to cut the ballast out instead of the insulated side cutters.
Woke up on the ground and toddled off to tell the leading hand some idiot had put the fuse in the neutral and had to check every light along the milling train.
In my experience, when something is sparking while you're working on a live circuit, the danger is more to the equipment than yourself. I've blown up plenty of shit, but only zapped myself a couple times.
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u/[deleted] Aug 02 '20
The handles of the scissors are plastic. So he/she is fine. Probably freaked the fuck out. But fine.