This might be more appropriately posted in the Ya Can't Fix Stupid thread, but I thought it deserved a special place of its own if only for the folks that recorded it and their comments at the end, and for speculation. If it's for real, it's a Darwin for sure.

Is this a performance? Interesting that no one recorded the fall to the ground. If it's faked it fooled me the first time around. After several viewings, I'm not sure. What do y'all think? Some of you stage and/or fire guys or gals may have something to say about it. Just curious.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10202666428413383

For what it's worth, I say almost certainly fake.

As it happened, I actually witnessed someone die this way on New Year's Eve 1999-2000 in Las Vegas. I was about 30 feet away when it happened. Here's a link to the write up from the Las Vegas Sun. But the short version is, a kid climbed a telephone pole, grabbed some power lines, and fell.

A few key differences between this video and what I witnessed.

1. When one is electrocuted, all of one's muscles tense up. In the video, note the guy's right leg is still partially flexed as the putative electrocution happens.

2. Electrical components don't explode like that. Granted, just because I didn't witness an explosion doesn't mean it can't happen. But if there really were an explosion, one would expect the wires to at least jiggle around a little. Moreover, one would expect the component itself to give off a bit of shrapnel.

3. The dude fell straight down. A little too straight. He didn't flop, sag, twirl, or anything like that.

4. It also seems like he fell a little too fast, and generally at the wrong rate. Looked like a linear or constant velocity, not a velocity that increases with time squared.

Seems fake to me for the following reasons:

1) The reaction of the bystanders - immediate laughter and "I gotta put this on Youtube", rather than shock and horror.
2) The camera stays focused on the wires and never pans to the "victim" on the ground.
3) The shock occurs even though he's touching the same wires he's touched before (I'm not an electrical expert, and maybe I'm wrong on that, but it's a bit odd that he can play around unharmed for all that time until something happens).
4) If you watch closely, he's still dancing normally very briefly AFTER the initial shock, then his image appears to "freeze."
5) Also, as MobilityBundle stated, the fall didn't look "normal."


Ron

Just wondering, then--what are the components of producing a fake like this?

See here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTx81Rj00gc

I think someone just took the video above, cut it short, and added some video / audio effects at the end.

Well, there you go! Nice work, Balducci.

Ron

Well, the link I gave was right there in the comments below the video at the link in the OP.

The one above looks fake to me.

I've seen a real one on top of indian railway where the guy was obviously mentally ill, and he gets FRIED before he hits the ground.

There was another one where the chap was on drugs and he falls from a good hight. in both cases the short circuit or whatever you'd call it, had a loud bang that could be heard from far distance.

I won't post any of them here though.

I don't think this one is fake.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWb8U51Tk6s

Interesting!