Story:
What Kind of Sorcery is That? Guy Used Himself as a Jump Starter Cable
Other Versions
He just used himself as a jump starter cable.
Fact Check:
An intriguing video is viral online alleging to show a Guy used Himself as a Jump Starter Cable in starting a Car with apparent dead battery. It appears to show the man placing one of his hands over a charged battery and the other one on dead battery terminals of a Car. Sparks appear as he touches the metal top of the car and the dead battery inside it. The video suggests the guy passes/conducts electricity from the charged battery to the dead one inside the car. Although popular, what you see in the video is not real – one cannot jump start a car like that.
Origin of Video: Guy Used Himself as Jump Starter Cable
On 2nd February 2020, Imgur user ‘Existence Is Pain Was Taken‘ published the video with title ‘Jumper Cable Manufacturers Hate This One Simple Trick‘. Consequently, the video appeared with similar and other claims on various social media pages.
On 4th Feb. 2020, Twitter user ‘Watch People Die Inside’ shared the video with a description saying ‘why women live longer than men‘. Further, Twitter pages Best Videos and Funny Vines shared the video saying the guy used himself as a jump starter cable. The video went viral on social media with many people discussing the authenticity of the incident.
Not Possible
Electricity does not flow like shown in the video, you need two conductors representing a plus and a minus to jump charge a dead battery. For instance, the video below shows how to Jump start a vehicle with Jumper Cables.
On the other hand, fully charged automotive batteries measure around 12 volts or above. While a car battery may technically have enough amperage to kill you, its voltage is too low to generate a current through the human body. So, what you see in the video is not real – the guy did not use himself as a jump starter cable. As you can see the logo on bottom right, the video is edited using InShot photo & video editor. The aforementioned Imgur user has been publishing some edited, CGI videos perhaps for the sake of fun. And as suggested above, the content in fact appeared later on various social pages sharing funny content.
Quite often, such a ‘superhero’ act of charging cars appears in movies and is not real. However, it does not mean you can mess around your automotive electrical system. In certain conditions, you can get a nasty shock, also from other components explained on Lifewire website lifewire.com.
Update: 6th February 2020
Hoax fighter and fact finder HoaxEye found the possible source of the digitally edited video on Vimeo. Hernan Pettinaroli, an Associate Creative Director of an advertising agency shared the video in February 2019 with the title ‘IGNITION’. Notably, he also shared few other too good to be true videos.
Hoax or Fact:
Hoax.
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