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u/THEBADW0LFE 5d ago
This video, like this man, lasted entirely too long
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u/gakun 5d ago
This is in Brazil, and I swear we need some scientists to study brazilian criminals, because I can guarantee that if it was an honest electrician worker falling from those wires he'd be paralyzed for life or dead, but a homeless crackhead can just walk away from it to cause more headaches to everyone.
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u/fordag 5d ago
Many years ago I was in the back of a building getting a new roof. The front of the building was 2 stories. It was an old building, the first floor had 16 foot ceilings, the second floor had 12 foot ceilings.
The back of the building was three stories and the basement/ground floor had 12 foot ceilings.
I'm sitting in the back room on the first floor with my brother and we both see something big fly past the window. We look at each and say "was that a body"?"
We run to the back door out into the deck to see the roofer who had fallen off the roof, probably around 45 feet, laying on the pavement below. We thought he was dead.
Then he twitches, jumps up and says "oh shit!" And runs right back up the stairs to the deck where we were, says "don't say anything" and then up the ladder to the roof. His breath was pure vodka fumes.
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u/Googalyfrog 5d ago
Honestly the vodka both likely caused the fall and likely saved him from it. If you can relax and go limp before you hit the ground iirc you can absorb the impact alot better than if you tense up. Drunk off your ass.means your too out of it to realise your falling and 'react (tensing up) in time'.
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u/ChungLingS00 4d ago
I wish Mythbusters was still around. I’d love to see them do an episode on this.
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u/notgonnatakeno 4d ago
No, this episode would suck they would get to exactly .08 like they always do do some silly reflex test on each other, then throw Buster off of the roof and call the myth busted when whatever sensor they stuck on buster went off.
Just like the episode for texting is worse than drunk driving, they didn’t even get drunk. They got buzzed.
Ever since that episode where they figured out that fertilizer actually makes a really powerful bomb, they went really really soft core on actually testing myths.
None of them would get shitfaced and actually jump off a roof for science
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u/Tyler89558 4d ago
“Fertilizer makes a really powerful bomb”
(Oh shit. We’re just televised how to make a bomb)
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u/notgonnatakeno 3d ago
Televised how to make a cheap and powerful bomb out of common materials that are hard for the government to restrict access to.
Pretty sure they got a talking to from the defense department about that episode
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u/SantasDead 5d ago
In high-school chemistry class my buddy got pulled out mid class.
Turns out his father fell off the first story of of a building and died instantly.
The human body is an amazingly robust yet fragile thing.
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u/Welshgirlie2 4d ago
So your electricians need to start consuming crack...might balance out the survival odds.
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u/Trussed_Up 5d ago
This is SUCH a horrendously anti social thing to do.
You decrease everyone else's quality of life so yours can be very marginally better.
Developing societies are plagued by this sort of loser.
In the West we can afford to roll our eyes at these days. In a developing country, the penalties for this kind of thing should be shockingly harsh. No pun intended.
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u/sirfurious 5d ago
He could've put all that effort into construction or something but this is the "shortcut" I guess
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u/TurdPartyCandidate 5d ago edited 5d ago
"all that effort." 20 minutes of stealing copper? It's about as low effort money as you can get.
Edit: to the mouth breathing morons down voting me: you need skill and focus to do construction. To steal copper you can be homeless, high on crack, and do it whenever the fuck you get your jolt of energy. Don't act like this dude is putting effort into anything. You're either really belittling construction workers, or putting drug fueled theievery on a pedestal. Both are stupid as fuck.
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u/Albuscarolus 5d ago
Do you know how much rubber and insulation you need to peel off before you can get any money for it
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u/kremlingrasso 5d ago
Oh and add to this that now his going to cry for help and moan for hours in the middle of the night because nobody is willing to call the ambulance.
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u/boogertee 5d ago
Maybe a similar little scrote stole the wheels off the ambulance.
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u/AyaHawkeye 5d ago
There was an case a couple of years ago in my county (UK) where an air ambulance attended a pretty bad car accident. They landed in a field, went to the accident site, and a bunch of kids thought it would be a great idea to mess around with the rotor blades and hang off them. Meant they weren't able to take off due to the possibility of damage. Very fortunate they were able to get the casualties safely to hospital via road, otherwise those idiots could have cost a life.
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u/Wolfinder 5d ago
I was very pleased when I looked up and saw this was on WCGW/WSP. Also pleased he didn't just spring back up.
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u/noirnour 5d ago
Idk what part of "The West" you're in but people do this or very similar in every developed country I can think of. Dope fiends are universal and have nothing more to do with "developing" countries than so called "developed" countries.
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u/Welshgirlie2 4d ago
In the UK the wire thieves like to steal railway cabling that runs alongside the track and is used for the electric signaling or power to overhead cables/third rail. It's not as prevalent as it used to be, but does occasionally still happen.
Depending on where you are in the UK, wire thieves also have to contend with avoiding the third rail, https://www.networkrail.co.uk/our-work/looking-after-the-railway/track/third-rail/ which is instant death 95% of the time if touched. And if they're even more stupid and try for the overhead line in other parts of the country, that's pretty much instant death 100% of the time. Cos you don't even have to touch the wire, sometimes the electricity will arc.
And that's assuming they don't electrocute themselves on a trackside signal box when cutting power. Or get whapped by a train doing 100mph...
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u/Boongala 4d ago
I live in the formerly developed world, Los Angeles. We have homeless zombies stealing copper from streetlights so frequently that we have whole neighborhoods permanently dark.
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u/HelplessPenguinGod 5d ago
Desperation makes people do crazy things. What person in their right mind would ever want to do this if they had better options?
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u/Trussed_Up 5d ago
Nonono.
I want to head this response right off.
I know its born from honest sympathy. But its ridiculously misguided.
I don't know this individual's life story. But you don't craft public policy on individuals.
Perhaps he really is the rare one who just had zero options left.
But not likely.
Much more likely, by available data, this dude is a low IQ individual who figures his best shot at an easy payday is robbing the public good. The reason he's doing something so dumb is probably because he's dumb.
Too many people grow up watching Aladdin or whatever, thinking that thieves are hungry misbegottens. Much more often, they're stupid people who just want easy money. And anyone who has ever worked charitably with the lowest ends of society, or with law enforcement, knows this.
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u/Tibbaryllis2 5d ago
You touch on it, but really the laziness of the people that do these kind of things can’t be overlooked. Being productive with some sort of normal work is too hard, so they’ll justify the immense amount of physical effort and risk to do something like this for a marginal onetime payout.
And I say laziness because it’s usually something fairly physically demanding and time consuming. Stealing and processing copper isn’t physically easy.
You see it all the time in the developed world where if they could only show up to work on time, then they’d do much less work to get consistently paid. But they’ve got to show up to work on time, do the work, do what their boss tells them, etc, and that’s just too much, so here they are free soloing the power grid for ~.2-.6 pounds of copper/foot at ~$4/lb or (much more common now for overhead lines) ~.05-.2 pounds of aluminum/foot ~$0.5/lb.
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u/TacticusThrowaway 5d ago
Plenty of very rich, very secure people still commit unnecessary crimes to screw over other people.
Like drug cartel heads.
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u/APGaming_reddit 5d ago
video starts at 1:50
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u/xKitey 5d ago
ah but then you miss the 1:50 seconds of him cutting zipties and stepping on the wire to seperate them before he falls and doesnt even get electrocuted
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u/Cgkfox 5d ago
That is so much work. It feels like a regular job would be about the same, without the danger.
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u/demoneclipse 5d ago edited 5d ago
Regular job requires showing up on time, having a shower, taking instruction, and ultimately being humble about not having a super fancy career.
These twats will actually brag about their "craftiness" at stealing cables like they are some sort of entrepreneur.
I hope he broke both legs, but it seems to be just one. Someone should call him an ambulance though. Not fun seeing him suffering on the ground with no way to ask for help.
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u/SmellyFbuttface 5d ago
Let him roll around for a while and reflect on his actions
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u/Post_Nuclear_Messiah 5d ago
It would be a terrible shame if he had actually cut the telephone cables that would have been needed to call him an ambulance.
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u/dolla-dolla-billyall 5d ago
Judging from the looks of it, looks like some kind of third world country where your only options are eke out a living being a street vendor or eke out a living committing crime.
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u/Gikka218 4d ago
do you think developing countries only have criminals and street vendors with no other jobs whatsoever?
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u/BlendedMonkeyStirFry 5d ago
It's probably not even copper
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u/alienbringer 5d ago
If that is phone/tv lines it would be copper core.
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u/Hillenmane 5d ago
Depending on where this is, lots of the main feed cables nowadays are fiber-optic, which is not even worth a cheeseburger and fries.
Individual homes are often still fed by copper wiring though
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u/PGSylphir 5d ago
That looks like Brazil, and the year is 2023, so could very well be broadband cables, though likely TV or Phone. As you go deeper into the country you see less and less fibre optic, some places still use satelite radio for internet (sort of like starlink but a very old system and very slow).
Fiber is only the norm in cities cloesr to the shores, where there's more money and therefore infrastructure.
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u/Barnaby_Snickett 5d ago
Most scrap places won’t accept coax. Not enough copper in that core. They like electrical or CAT6
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u/johnny-Low-Five 5d ago
Even CAT 6 was hard to sell back when I was an apprentice electrician. The apprentices would get the scrap and it wasn't really worth anything compared to actual copper wiring but if it was mixed in, depending on the amount, the scrap yard would make me dig it out because they claimed it's weight was overwhelmingly things other than copper.
They also offered about 20-35% of the value on non-stripped wire to avoid the effort themselves and to limit the ability to hide non-copper in the mix. Looking back I probably looked like a criminal stripping the insulation off 100s of wires while in my filthy construction clothes to any regular person that saw me. Other scrappers and construction guys would know what I was doing.
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u/Outlaw11091 5d ago
...honestly, I didn't think that was going to happen. I was thinking this probably needs a NSFW tag...this is better.
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u/alienbringer 5d ago
The lower lines (at least in the U.S., which this video isn’t from) are phone or cable lines. The higher lines are the electrical ones. So dude probably knocked out a bunch of people’s internet and TV for this.
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u/Outlaw11091 5d ago
Yeah, I'm aware, I just figured he was going to complete a circuit accidentally.
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u/Fuzzy-Leading-4080 5d ago
I think this is the thing that Darwin was talking about right?
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u/Blaze_Vortex 5d ago
Nah the dude was, unfortunately, actually staying fairly safe. Even the fall wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been.
Given his age and habits, he has likely added to the gene pool. A most terrible thing but truth should not be denied.
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u/freshcutgas 5d ago
Meth must be so sick seeing what people go through to get it...
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u/johnny-Low-Five 5d ago
I thought that at first but he really doesn't fit the mold for a meth head. More likely heroin, pills or some other depressant. People addicted to stimulants have that gaunt look because they have no appetite and don't "waste" money on food.
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u/Previous-Ad4852 5d ago
A really bad part of me is slightly disappointed that upon the ground, he didn't ground the cable and get fried after falling. A really bad part.
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u/monkeypincher 5d ago
My favorite part is that someone is manning that PTZ camera at 4:00 in the morning just to watch this dumbass work.
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u/koolaidismything 5d ago
Dum a hole. People rely on electricity to keep people alive.. sleep apnea masks and more.
This dipshit is gonna ruin half a town for $2.50 in copper. Toss his ass in a pit lol. He was willing to let the entire town suffer so tit for tit
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u/Ebola714 5d ago
There has to be a better and easier way to make money. This seems like worst way. Plus, he he won't be able to sell the copper in the afterlife.
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u/QuantumBobb 5d ago
They should invent a technology that allows you to remove parts of a video that don't matter so that you can make posts with just the bits people want to see.
Patent pending.
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u/charredskeeverhide 5d ago
Well this is unexpected, I thought my comment would be 'frying tonight'.
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u/BobSacamano-443 5d ago
Should be on r/confusingperspective. I thought this was a giant for a moment.
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u/red_misc 5d ago
To me there is nothing going wrong here. The AH is on the street getting what he was looking for....
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u/Flippant_Hostage 5d ago
🎵George George George of the jungle methed out as he can be! WATCH OUT FOR THAT ELECTRICITY!!!🎵
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u/Grumpy949 5d ago
Is there really enough copper in a cable that size to make that worth the effort?
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u/Yuna_Nightsong 5d ago
I hate people that damage public infrastructure. Selfish idiots that damage/dismantle tram/train tracks, electricity cables or anything like that.
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u/Bubbly-War1996 5d ago
I think I'm incapable of feeling bad for people that do this kind of damage to public infrastructure, like he is destroying things paid from everyone's taxes and he's inconveniencing hundreds or even putting their lives in danger because he wants to make a couple bucks.
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u/sm753 5d ago
This isn't bad...to this day, still the worst thing I've seen on Reddit was back in the early days of this site. Someone was trying to steal copper wire from a street light and got fried. Like his charred corpse was literally melted into the cement block that the light was mounted to.
Can't unsee...ever.
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u/mickhavoc 5d ago
What a moron! The current carrying conductors are up high, and are normally steel or aluminium
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u/MixerFistit 5d ago
There's so much in this clip. The awful saw handling, the terrible stability of the guy. The cctv operator once he's fallen. Is everyone in this video just smacked off their tits?
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u/FancifulLaserbeam 5d ago
After several minutes of cutting cables lose, he falls out of the rat's nest.
Saved you 3 minutes of your life.
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u/noneckjoe123 5d ago
Someone said recently that if the “bottom” 2% of society just up and vanished, all our lives would be better. That person was right.
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u/ReflectionItchy7904 5d ago
It's wild that people risk an agonizing death just for a few bucks worth of scrap metal.
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u/VendingIOT 4d ago
Is it just me or does it look more like he's taking the wire insulation than the copper?
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u/FarEntertainment8178 4d ago
He’s not very smart but i will admire his willpower and agility. If only someone would hire and he could apply himself with the same level of commitment im sure he would be doing very well
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u/King_Nephilim82 4d ago
That's super dangerous if he keeps on doing this his luck is going to eventually run out. 💀
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u/Fresh-Wrongdoer6934 4d ago
You're in a city with infrastructure and telecommunications poles and still wearing the same amount of clothes as Mowgli from The Jungle Book.
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u/RockAndGames 4d ago
Hahaha motherfucker even says "ayuda", seeking help from the same society he us trying to steal from, fuck him.
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u/EstimateIll4262 4d ago
even the worst meth heads dont do this!!
and they will gut AC units or basement plumbing in no time.
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u/Normadus 5d ago
I thought the ending would be more shocking