How To Build a Taser

Shame on neatorama for this dangerous post. Please remove it before someone kills an innocent person.

@Cat: If you touched the leads with a screwdriver and happened to be touched the screwdriver as well, you only got a small fraction of the jolt. Following the path of least resistance almost the entire jolt would have gone straight through the screwdriver itself.
It doesn't take complicated circuitry to kill.

Many people here have shocked themselves with cameras flashes , I've done it too, but the thing to keep in mind is that 300 volts through your finger or hand is not too dangerous, but think of how the muscles all the way up to your shoulder reacted. Then think of this taser being used by some kid on his friend's chest like the police would do. Then remember that the heart is a muscle.

@Cat: The battery current limitation has nothing to do with the resultant shock. All a matter of capacitance times volts. You know those bug zappers? The ones that look like badminton rackets? I replaced the capacitor in one with a cap about a hundred times larger; when you zap a bug, the noise actually makes your ears ring. Now *that's* a bug-zapper! (Around the same energy an electric fencer puts out - painful, but it ain't gonna kill you.)

LOL. This nothing. Anyone ever see a capacitor in old TV? Now that was fun for elimintaing the neighbourhood bullies. They were so big we used to play hide and seek in them.

@number1guy : hah! that's exactly how i learned! a long time ago, i worked customer service at a grocery store. when we'd get returns, they'd usually be put in the "Reclamations" area, where they'd be sent back to the manufacturer for a replacement or refund to the store. but some products were so cheap (a lot of the store-branded merch), they were just thrown away or recycled.

so one evening this lady came in with one of our store-branded disposable cameras, which didn't go to Reclamations. i replaced it for her, and she went on her way. this was an especially slow night, so i grabbed a screwdriver out of our junk drawer and began prying the plastic casing of the camera apart. well, the screwdiver slipped and jammed itself way into the camera, and touched both leads of the flash capacitor. i got a nasty jolt, i must've jumped three feet in the air, and threw the camera across my little customer service booth!

in hindsight it was probably pretty funny to see, and didn't hurt THAT much, although i could feel a small electrical burn under my skin for the next day or so.

now i'm not trying to play Devil's advocate, but the capacitors used in disposable cameras generally aren't that harmful (notice i said "probably"...meaning if you're a healthy adult without a heart condition or something). remember, it's not volts that kill, it's amperage, and considering disposable cameras usually just have a couple AA batteries in them, they don't have nearly enough amperage to really injure someone. IIRC, a AA battery put out around 2500mA (2.5 amps), and that's only if they're brand-new. certainly not enough to be lethal, and disposable cameras lack the kind of circuitry needed to boost that level up to something that would land someone in the hospital (let alone kill them).

now i'm not saying people should randomly go around shocking people with charged capacitors, especially if you have no knowledge of how electricity works or how it could effect the person you're playing a prank on. but as stupid as this home-made "taser" is, it's hardly lethal (in fact, it won't even do what real tasers do, which is incapacitate someone for a short period...it'll most likely just scare someone and cause them to chase you around the room for being a dick).