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- People who kill electronics by touch
People who kill electronics by touch
When that person enters the room, all the electronic goods break down.
Whether it’s an excess of static electricity or something mental, some people seem to have a thoroughly disastrous relationship with electricity.
What if you were to receive a high-voltage shock that sends you jumping every time you touch an electronic product? What if the lights were to fail just because you walked into the room? What if the freezers break down every time you go to the supermarket, so that they ban you for life?
What’s all this horror nonsense, you may wonder, but people like that actually do exist, people who get spectacularly badly along with electronic goods, people who suffer from what we might call an “allergy to electricity.” Allergies are usually caused by pollen or house dust or various foodstuffs, but for some people it appears to be electricity, the very pulse of the modern world, that is causing their problems.
We have probably all experienced the sensation of touching a metal doorknob on a dry winter’s day and receiving a shock from static electricity. But for some people it’s much worse. Maybe it’s because something in their bodies makes them store static electricity, but when they touch a metal part, you can actually see blue sparks flying from their fingertips. Things get really nasty when they forget themselves and shake somebody’s hand – and the other person is injured by the electric shock. Even more curious is the fact that this predisposition can be genetically inherited by their children.
In the homes of such people the electrical appliances keep breaking down. TVs, irons, dryers, everything. The manufacturers too throw in the towel, saying “if you keep ruining your appliances, you have to renounce the guarantee or we won’t sell any more stuff to you.”
For some sufferers, such electricity allergy symptoms only appear under certain mental conditions. In the case of one woman, the electronic goods in the vicinity start acting up only when she’s heavily stressed at work. For one man, on the other hand, the lights go out when he’s feeling distracted. Another man wreaked havoc with the expensive X-ray machines and operation equipment at a hospital. That he got emotionally stirred up when entering the hospital is understandable, but it also made the cause of his electricity allergy much harder to pin down.
Ever since Edison invented the light bulb, are daily lives have been profoundly linked to electricity. These days, every imaginable household gadget seems to contain a microcomputer. For most people, living even a single day without electricity is unimaginable. However, at the same time, the influence of electricity on living things (including human beings) has never been thoroughly researched. Indeed, if you were to go to your local hospital complaining of any of the above symptoms of electricity allergy, they would probably treat you like you’re deranged. Nevertheless, there are people who are worried and troubled by electricity. Even for the rest of us, who live our lives in homes overflowing with electronic devices, perhaps it would be more natural to think that they really do affect us somehow.
