wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) (03/06/90)
From: wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) This question is inspired by, but not per se _about_, "The Hunt for Red October." There are _no_ HfRO spoilers here. (My question is based on the assumption that the movie's producers got most of their technical details right, including the one that inspired the question.) In one of the more dramatic scenes in the movie, Jack Ryan arranges for himself to be flown by chopper from the USS Enterprise to a point at sea where he'll rendezvous with the sub USS Dallas. The method of transfer is the classic air-to-sea "lower the guy on a line from the chopper and have the receiving team grab him and unhook him." However, there's a pretty interesting thunderstorm going on in the area of the rendezvous when Ryan gets there, which complicates things. The Dallas captain says to the guy who'll be standing in the conning tower doing the actual retrieval something about "enough static electricity to light up this whole boat," apparently meaning that in flying through the storm the chopper (and Ryan) have picked up a lot of stray electrons. During the transfer, the guy in the conning tower uses a long metal hook on the end of an insulated pole to grab at the dangling Ryan, accompanied by shouts of "Don't touch him!" from his assistant. When the hook touches Ryan, there's a _big_ electrical discharge, which I assume to be the result of the excess static electricity on Ryan getting grounded. Okay, this all makes sense, except for one thing I can't figure out: how does all this work without Ryan's nervous system getting seriously fratzed by the sudden change in his body's electrical potential? I mean, isn't this the sort of thing that's usually referred to as "electrocution?" -- William December Starr <wdstarr@athena.mit.edu>