The worst shock I have ever had was from an old Vivitar electronic flash. The battery had gotten weak and I took it apart to see if I could replace it.
The next thing I knew, the flash had been thrown against a wall and destroyed. I later read that they are potentially very dangerous.
I was a Radar Tech in the Navy. One time just as we were returning to port, our Nav Radar went down. Another tech and I troubleshot it to a bad connector a trigger cable. Being tube equipment, if you turned it off, you’d have a 5 min or so wait on power up. Just before cutting into the cable with my trusty Case Trapper knife, I asked my lead how bad was I going to get bit. I remember him saying, Triggers, 5 to 50 volt spikes, go ahead. Once that knife blade contacted the center conductor, the knife flew across the room and bounced off the bulkhead right next to shipmate. I retrieved the knife, taped it up good a did the repair.
I was watching a shipmate work on the fathometer that was mounted about chest high on the bulkhead. He got across the 4,000Volt B+ supply. He flew back several feet onto his back. He was shaking like a chicken with his head cut off. Then it stopped as he looked up at everyone watching him. He said, “ I’m going to go get a cup of coffee”. That fool acted like nothing had happened. Not me boy! I get the shakes after getting zotted.
“The worst shock I have ever had was from an old Vivitar electronic flash. The battery had gotten weak and I took it apart to see if I could replace it.”
It was the storage capacitor. Probably the last thing the battery had in it went to that. High capacity/voltage capacitors are extremely dangerous - so dangerous that they must be shipped “strapped” and unstrapped only just before they are installed in circuit, because they can actually accumulate static electricity.
Before modern digital copiers, copiers worked with enormous flash tubes, and the bigger copiers that could do more pages per minute had REALLY large power supplies and capacitors. We made them for a well-known xerographic company in the 80’s, and one of our engineers got hit with one, it burned away some of the flesh on his hand.