Being an electrician might pay a decent wage, but that’s largely because of how dangerous it is. Most people don’t think about just how deadly electricity can be, and one elderly man in the profession is lucky to be alive after he was zapped with 14,000 volts. His souvenir? A bizarre ringed burn mark in his eyes.
It was truly a freak accident.
The man was working a job when he accidentally bumped his shoulder into a live wire. The 14,000 volts flowing through it went into his body, surging all over his body and into his optic nerve.
While he survived the terrifying ordeal, he not only ended up with the strange mark in his eyes but went on to develop cataracts in his eyes, per The New England Journal of Medicine.
How did this happen?
The eyes of an electrician after being zapped by 14,000 volts of electricity.
His shoulder touched a live wire and the current passed through his entire body, including the optic nerve, which connects the eye to the brain.
The effect was two bizarre star-shaped electrical… pic.twitter.com/fHgF32MbXc
— Morbid Knowledge (@Morbidful) December 11, 2023
Dr. Bobby Korn, an associate professor of clinical ophthalmology at the University of California, San Diego, and also one of the people in charge of treating the man, explained what happened to NBC News.
“The optic nerve is similar to any wire that conducts electricity,” Korn said. “In this case, the extreme current and voltage that passed through this important natural wire caused damage to the optic nerve itself.”
Many people couldn’t believe the photos were real.
While the incident happened nearly 20 years ago, photos of the man’s eyes recently began circulating around X, formerly known as Twitter, with many remarking they couldn’t believe that this had actually happened to someone.
“It looks like those eyes are on a dead body, but yes miraculously, he lived, he ain’t even blind, just bad vision,” one person wrote.
Another joked, “If he doesn’t have X-Ray vision, what was the point?”
One thing everyone could agree with is that electricity is no joke and the man was lucky to have survived!
