When working with mains voltages entirely different set of precautions and protocols apply.
We are talking about ESD sensitive low voltage electronics.
No, seems initially they mean a high voltage, I believe.
Since I was a fortunate to have a high skin resistance, I got only small portion of all ampers and survived. So, If I would use gloves, it could help. But it was an ancient lamp-based device (black/white TV…), and they have had a high voltage components with a condensers, so…
Still it was inconvenient to use gloves! I just should check that it’s pulled off the outlet, not only switched off (this device has had a permanent power supply bypassing the switch-off).
Like some electricians that put the light switches on neutral, instead on the line. 
Recently I changed all my lights to led, and I had to change some lamps too. I had the nice surprise to discover that I have to switch off the breakers too, and work with a head lamp.
I try to do my own electrical installations, because it seems I can do it better than an electrician. I also apply the color coding for the fazes, not like some of them.
A guy from the official electrical company connected the ground and the power faze in the electrical pannel. It staid like that for 2 years untill some worker discovered the warm ground beneath, and told me something is wrong. I didn’t knew why my appliances electrocuted me. 
With 900 MOm for skin resistance you could work on live high power lines… 
You mean the guy connected the ground and the neutral…
Maybe, but I do not want. I become a very sensitive to the static electricity since then. Up to jumping from the chair, when the small lighting is crossed from my fingers to the not properly grounded hardware…
Anyway, how did you measure 900 Mohm?
A multimeter will measure you skin resistance at ~1.5V, which is of no interest, but a multimeter won’t measure such high resistance anyway…
with an ommeter which I have had on this time. I do not remember the model or what’s was a voltage for a measurement, sorry. I just remembered the number, which explained to me, why I still alive, when all books said, that I must be dead.
So, you have a ohmeter that can measure 900 Mohm?
It would have to measure currents at nA…
I have nA amper meters in my lab. Their cost is prohibitive for a “home lab”…
Usually, we can stand very high currents for very short periods…
The 40 mA rule as “enough to kill you” is like a perfect storm. The current would have to go through you heart at the right spot.
Yes, the high limit was 1 GOm.
it was expensive, yes. But I have had a deal with a high voltage electronic those days. The strange thing was that it was not able to measure neither Amperes or a voltage if the electrical voltage was above 220 volts.
yeap, so I would assume that I was lucky. Twice. I never tried it in a third time 
The first two were painful enough to be careful in the future.
I don’t know what you were fixing, but it was probably a tube TV.
A normal capacitor wouldn’t hold 20 kV (maybe a very large industrial one that would hardly fit your home). You got it from a coil connected to a low voltage capacitor. That would be a very fast discharge…
Never got one from a TV… but I have seen somebody else take it… none ever died, but the 4 meter jump fits your description…
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This was the convergence of the rays, the image “floated” and “blinked”. The problem was a bad contact in one of the lamps (as usual), I was just careless and touched the discharge coil (it was easy), but getting to the lamp itself was not easy. You literally couldn’t help but replace it or clean it without touching the high-voltage coil (however I blamed a condenser that time 
).
I’m sure you disconnected from the mains, so, it was a capacitor. A capacitor on the coil circuit…
You should have discharged the capacitor by connecting the coil to the chassis. You would have witnessed a small spark and, later, avoid being the spark
yes, but I didn’t learn this on that time. So being a spark taught me quickly.
You know, theories and practice are distant usually. Yes, later I did exactly that, remove it from the main (disconnected from the outlet, not only switched off), discharge all known condensers to the chassis, including all suspicious coils, and then proceed.
Nope. As I said… The power and ground. The earth was warm were the ground line was planted.
Well, maybe I don’t understand what you’re saying…
If you connect the live wire to the ground, even if you have no differential switch and no current limit, the electrical company should…
Unless you have a really really bad ground…
The grounding was a 10mm copper (or 6?) linked to a pipe in the earth.
And I had a 30mA differential on the mains.
The electrical company dosen’t provide the ground wire, only power and neutral. And they usualy link the neutral to the house grounding.
So as I understand it, the differential catches the flow of current between lines… there was no flow between power and neutral, only from power to ground, which was going only to the earth and in my house appliances. And the link was before the electrical counter, so I didn’t had a inflated bill.
After discovering the problem (even my cable TV had melted), the guys came and disconnected the power from ground, replaicing it with neutral. So now we have neutral to ground.
I read in an electrical stuff book that it’s bad to link the neutral to ground, but I can’t change anything in the electrical pannel, because it’s sealed.
You may be running TNCS
Terra - Neutral Common (ie earthed/grounded) Separate protective earth. Neutral is grounded at your end. It’s not bad, and it’s actually used in bigger installations (ie factories, apartment buildings, large offices) that are usually three-phases anyway (with the right sizing, there is no current returning on neutral (in the case of a three-phase motor for example, there isn’t even a neutral wire to connect).
There are two ways of doing it. One good one not so good.
The good way is to have a separate ground (a metal pole in the ground) and connect the neutral to it. This way you are protected from somebody accidentally connecting live to what is supposed to be neutral and blowing up all single phase devices because now they get 380V instead of 220V.
The not so good way is to forget the metal pole and connect the “earth” pin in the outlets to the neutral wire in the distribution board. It works as long as the neutral wire from your house to the substation does not break. If it breaks, you get live on the “earth” wire.