No, the topic is the UK electric code not being safe.

You’re literally arguing that merely BECUSE the code needs safety devices it is therefore unsafe, which is utter nonsense.

By this logic, a potato is the best in terms of electrical safety. That’s of course tongue in cheek, but if we’re reducing plug capabilities in the interest of calling them safe, USB-A 1.0 is the “safest” because it only outputs 5V at 3A.

I’m concerned that you thought that was legitimately some kind of good point you made there. The fact that we’re talking about a household plug and socket is blindingly obvious from context.

SN441011 is the Swiss system that through its 2-, 3- and 5-pin design supports single- and three-phase for up to 11 kW in domestic applications.

I have literally never in my life thought for even a millisecond “hey wouldn’t be useful if I could plug my regular appliances into a high power outlet too ?”

How many multiphase and high power outlets do you people have that needing to be forward compatible with regular single phase household plugs is relevant ?

There’s like maybe 2 or 3 devices in a home that even need multiphase high power outlets, like ovens+ranges, electric driers or water heaters or EVSE. And none of those tend to move around much.

Also, again, as I literally stated in in comment of above, that is a matter of convenience , not safety, so it’s an irrelevant point.

Putting the onus of electrical safety on the user for repairs with a screwdriver is, in my opinion, inherently unsafe, especially when there’s no safe backup through a circuit breaker. Imagine an impatient user replaces a burnt fuse with a piece of aluminum foil.

What if someone does that to a car fuse ? What if someone does it one of those old circuit fuses that you still get in old buildings without breakers ?

Or imagine an impatient home owner duck tapes their breaker/GFCI to “ON” because they can’t be arsed to find the fault that makes it trip every 20 seconds.

Idiots ignoring obvious safety instructions will make most ANY system unsafe. It’s not like replaying a fuse is a hard or dangerous process. Most plugs allow you to just clip out the fuse holder with anything small and pointy, swap it with an equal, and then pop it back in. It’s not like we’re expecting people to do rocket surgery here.

And here we are again. For the billionth fucking time in a row:

THE CURRENT CAPACITY OF A CIRCUIT HAS ZERO, NADA, NULL INFLUENCE ON THAT CIRCUITS ELECTRIC SHOCK POTENTIAL OR SEVERERTY AND IS NOT RELEVANT WHATSOEVER FOR HUMAN SAFETY.

And device safety is MORE THAN adequately provided by fused plugs. You just irrationally hate the UK network for some fucking reason, and are yet completely incapable of providing even a singular valid argument as to it being less safe.

You can get pretty much all of things today. You just have to pay the same price you did back then, adjusted for inflation.

In the old days every single seat on airplane was basically business/first class. There was no such thing as economy.

Passengers wanted cheaper tickets, so the clas system was introduced to offer cheap economy seats, and now y’all complaining that the seats specifically invented to be as cheap as possible don’t offer the same amenities as the expensive ones.

Unless they’re mandated by code, I don’t care. Basic safety being an optional add on by the manufacturer is bad.

Nothing in this thread is about fatphobia. Literally nothing.

It’s simply about the fact that society can’t bend around every body type in existence. And yes, that sucks unbelievably much for people who ARE untypical bodytypes, and yes it’s enormously unfair but it’s more or less the best for a shit situation.

It’s unreasonable and impossible to expect everything in every circumstance, to be accommodating to every possible body type , at least not without having having a massive number of seats on every transport empty, because they’re reserved for people of unusual bodytypes, who are rare and therefore rarely use them. That would make prices higher for everyone, it would require more planes and busses an trains to be built and moved to accomodate the much lower number of effectively usable seats, which will lead to even higher costs, the networks will grid lock under the increased traffic, and the environment will suffer from all the extra airplanes that are now transporting far fewer pax per flight than before.

240V @ 30A is the highest on the planet. You consistently ignored current rating, despite recognizing that without the special, overengineered fused plugs, appliances would be exposed to them. Your inclusion of this is dishonest.

So your argument is that if you remove a necessary safety features the system is suddenly less safe. Well fucking shocker. That’s no different from me saying that if you used a ring breaker on a Japanese branch, it would be exposed to 30A and just as dangerous, and therefore concluding the Japanese system must be worse.

It’s a stupid hypothetical that tells you nothing about either system.

Also, at the point where a device is drawing short circuit current, EITHER breaker will trip most instantly, and whether the threshold is 30 or 20, the device is a smoking pile of burnt plastic afterwards anyway.

And again, breakers aren’t designed to protect devices, and devices aren’t designed to withstand some kind of massive fault tolerance based on the circuit they’re plugged into. No device on planet earth is designed with the concept of "it has to survive even when a 20A short circuit happens. And even if so, it would just be “short circuit” in general. Because as I’ve pointed out, a dead short will trip EVERY breaker, instantly, period. As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, 7A rated power cords are completely legal to sell for use on 20A Japanese outlets.

But if I’m wrong feel free to correct me. But specifically. I want specific and concrete measures and steps that you aledge are taken specifically to guard devices based on the fusing of the circuit they are attached too.

The claim you’re rebutting is not the claim that was made. The claim that was made was that each UK circuit has higher current than a comparable North American circuit. Which is true. A UK household circuit is at 30A, while Canadian/US/Mexican is at 15/20A. American and UK homes use roughly the same amount of total power, but the American home typically distributes that power with roughly 4 times as many, lower-current circuits.

Sure, the current on one ring is greater than that on one branch, that’s is true, I’ll concede that. I just consider it irrelevant. The total current coming in at the terminal connection though is half as much in the UK than the US. The US commonly has 100, 150 or 200Amp service panels.

The rest of the world safely uses unfused plugs.

No it doesn’t. Because you’re laboruimg under the delusion that breakers are designed to protect anything beyond the internal wiring of your walls. They don’t give a shit about anything else. That is their singular and sole purpose. Look for example at America. America has UNFUSED multi cords rated for 7A. There’s literally nothing stopping you in America from plugging a 7amp rated extension cord, into a 20A outlet, plugging in two space heater on max and a third one on low, and pull 18-19 amps through a cord rated for 7, and no fuse or breaker is going to stop you from doing that. So quite demonstratably, at minimum one part of the rest of the world very much does NOT safely use unfused plugs.

Every argument you make that requires fuses supports my contention. And no, it doesn’t. Swapping one safety features (central breakers) for a second, objectively better feature (fused plugs) isn’t invalidated by some ridiculous kindergarden bullshit of “oh but if you didn’t have those fuses it would be bad”

The code HAS those fuses, and with those fuses it is safe. Safer than a central breaker system in fact. You can’t just keep racking caveats changes and asterisks onto the UK electrical code and then laughing at how unsafe is. Every single arguement you make where you need to exclude/ignore safety features that the UK system has, is in fact an argument in favour of the system.

You’re assuming the internal resistance of a wire of sufficient gauge. An undersized wire - such as a power cord intended to be used on a 16A EU appliance - may not be capable of drawing 30A, let alone 1000, without catching fire. It may only draw 28A while it is glowing red hot. That same unfused power cable is perfectly acceptable and perfectly safe on a 16A EU circuit, but is unsafe on a UK household circuit without that special UK plug.

A power cord intended for a 16A EU appliance would be illegal to sell in the UK without an 15A fuse in the plug. Problem solved.

Again, you can’t argue the system is less safe when you keep needing to ignore safety devices to make that argument. I could just as well as say that without your indivisible branch breakers, the Japanese system is unsafe, and the UK manages to work perfectly safely without individual branch breakers. According to you, this is valid logic to demonstrate the Japanese system is worse than the UK system, and every time you mention branch circuits or branch breakers it just strengthens my point.

You’re ignoring the original point and arguing something tangential and irrelevant. The rest of the world safely uses unfused plugs. Which means that their power cables are simpler in design and construction, but necessitates that their power cable must be able to survive the full rated household current. The UK does not use this “unfused plug” design philosophy. The reason they don’t use it is because it would necessitate that their power cables be capable of surviving 30A faults, rather than the 16A in the EU.

The UK does not restrict their household supply circuits to 16A. They allow their household circuits to carry 30A. That standardization decision necessitates the fused plug that the rest of the world simply doesn’t need

I can just as easily flip that argument, about the UK safely using ring circuits with plug fuses, whilst the rest of the world needs to use branch breakers to keep their branches limited in size.

You’re literally just talking about the fact that the unique system in the UK requires unique safety features. That is itself value neutral, and adds nothing of relevance.

Not an accurate observation of my understanding at all, and not particularly relevant to the discussion. The topic of discussion is the relationship of plugs to household wiring.

Considering you were arguing that Japanese plugs need to handle LOWER current, when in reality it’s the exact opposite, they have to handle HIGHER current, I’d say it’s an accurate observation. The most common standardised all purpose plug in the UK is fused at, and rated for 13 Amps. Well below a 20Amp. Japanese circuit.

Conceded, with the caveat that the RCD/AFCI/GFCI device for the 20A circuit will be more sensitive and allow lower current to pass than the equivalent RCD/AFCI/GFCI device on the 100A circuit.

Your caveat is wrong. The baseline leakage current is affected predominantly by voltage and cable length. A 20 Amp circuit and a 100A circuit could both perfectly adequately and safely be protected by a 30mA RCD.

Conceded, and irrelevant to the issue at hand

Relevant to the issue at the time, which was you claiming the outcome of electric shock changes based purely on the amperage rating of the cable used.

I suspect that those cables actually do have a fuse in them, much like the fused plugs used on North American Christmas decorations.

So the entire core of your argument, other countries not needing fuses in cables/plugs has just gone poof then.

Yes, exactly. Which is why the unfused portions of that device have to be designed to handle at least 16A.

I’d like to a citation for the claim that appliances need to be withstand the Maximum current in a fault case. Also what “withstands” is even supposed to mean in this context.

But In my opinion, even if that’s the case, that’s a point in FAVOUR of UK plugs. You can receive literally the IDENTICAL level of safety by making the appliance 3A fault tolerant, and giving the plug a 3Amp fuse.

Isn’t the ability to make every device individually fault taulerant so much better than needing make them all fault tolerant to the max current.

It’s also far safer abroad, because you’re literally taken the fuse in the device with you. According to you, what happens when a device designed for a 16 Amp EU socket is plugged via adapter into a 20A Japanese socket. Now suddenly it has inadequate fault protection. Do the same thing with a UK socket, and it maintains the exact same level of fault tolerance it’s always had.

Agreed. I’ve repeatedly made that exact argument in support of my point.

So if you agree with all my points then what exactly is your issue with the UK ekectric code ?

It seems to me that your entire grape is based around the fact that the same safety features are achieved differently in the UK, and you never argue about those safety features being worse, you simply point out that they are necessary, and somehow that makes the system worse. Also, small current fuses are arguably safer than circuit breakers. You can’t detect a defective breaker, until it fails to actuate at excess current. A defective fuse would just be broken, and not allow a circuit to form in the first place.

I did notably just say that the plug is the best in the world for electrical safety. I’ve made no claims of it’s usefulness or convenience outside of that.

(( am also unaware of any country on the planet that uses the same plug/connector for general purpose household devices and 3 phase power. The number you provided, SN441011, also just leads to relatively generic household plug that doesn’t seem fit suited for multi phase use either, so not sure what you’re trying to say. I’ve also rarely seen places outside of industrial environments that have multiphase outlets, except in America, which has split phase power, and uses the voltage boost by going phase to phase instead of phase to ground. There’ll you’ll do often find 240V split phase outlets for high power appliances like shop heaters, electric clothes driers or EVSE, but those outlets also require unique receptacles and plugs))

E: I believe I misunderstood exactly what you meant. You’re complaining that UK electric code has nonstandard for a high power plug+socket combination. For one, that though has nothing at all to do with this plug. A lack of standard for a completely different plug has nothing to do with the quality of the plug at hand.

Also, there actually IS a standard, that is specifically adopted for EVSE in the UK. You can have a dedicated 400V three phase 32A circuit installed in your garage, and terminate in a red IEC 60309.

It’s not that the standard doesn’t exist, it’s just the UK has a very very heavy preference for simply hard wiring high power and multiphase appliances.

To say nothing of how comically giant every appliance plug needs to be, regardless of how low its wattage is?

It’s a minor nuisance yeah sure, but it also has the nice advantage that there’s no need to fully mould plastic around it. UK plugs are pretty much universally openable, meaning you can repair them yourself if a fuse dies, or one of the wires comes lose. It’s also really easy, and literally all you need is a single screw driver, to swap a working plug over onto a cable who’s plug has broken.

But even so, it’s again not a safety issue so not exactly relevant to my poing.

The higher voltage has nothing whatsoever to do with ring circuits. The UK runs on the same 220-240V AC as all of mainland Europe. And Africa. And most of mainland Asia. And South America. And Oceania. And most of the middle east. So not quite “higher than any other country”

Also those two claims are diametrically opposed to each other. Unless UK people use over twice the amount of electricity than Americans, the higher voltage will lead to LOWER total current. That’s quite literally the specific and sole motivating factor behind choosing a higher grid voltage.

And the current a conductor can pass has nothing whatsoever to do with it’s safety. You could have 50 amps blowing through a circuit, if it’s at 12V you can still touch it without getting a shock. Your car battery is capable of peak currents of several HUNDRED amps, and those are considered safe enough to just carry around by random people with bare hands…

The Japanese plugs are basically the same as American. You can literally get an electric shock if you hold them wrong whilst unplugging. There’s exposed live contacts from when you start unplugging until the prongs break their connection to the outlet.

Basically everything you said is demonstrably false. I’ve rarely seen someone be this confident and this incorrect about something.

That is utterly irrelevant. Circuit breakers and fuses are designed for the exclusive and sole purpose of protecting the circuit from being overloaded. A 100 amp circuit with a 100 Amp fuse is exactly as safe as a 20 amp circuit with a 20 amp fuse or a 5 amp circuit with a 5 amp fuse. If the voltage is above ~100-200V, all 3 of these are hundreds of times the amount of current it would take to deliver a fatal electric shock, and none of those fuses would trip from you getting shocked.

And a dead short on a 240V network will literally trip everything. UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps. A dead short at 240V with only the internal resistance of copper wiring would pull current in the neighborhood of 1000 amps. 1000, somewhat famously, being slightly larger than 30, making this another lie there.

And even if it weren’t a lie, how on earth does the location of the fuse make a difference in safety here ? If it’s in the wall or in the plug, as long as it’s there and does it’s job both would be equally safe.

The function provided by those shutters is achieved in the Japanese wiring by lower voltage, narrow holes in receptacles (allowable because they don’t need as large a contact to safely carry the lower rated current) and whole-house AFCI/GFCI.

No it isn’t. 110V is still dangerous to a child, and if you think otherwise I hope to god you aren’t, or ever become a parent. Also, as I stated, your plugs literally allow for an electric shock to happen whilst unplugging them because they’re so terrible. As for whole house GFCI, that is by necessity included in a ring circuit that wants GFCI on any outlet at all.

Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship of current and voltage. For a given electrical appliance, with a given wattage, a lower voltage means it needs to draw more current, not less. That’s why the US Japan need to have 20A household breakers, whereas in the EU 16A branches are more than enough, whilst still providing a higher load handling capability than a 20A Japanese fuse. A 1000 Watt microwave plugged into a Japanese socket will draw over twice as much current as a 1000 Watt microwave plugged into an EU or UK socket (which also means it produces 4 times the amount of electrical waste energy as heat, though that is generally negligible for short household cable runs either way. Can make a difference on the scale of a country though).

For a given voltage, the outcome of recieving a shock on a 20A fused circuit is literally indistinguishable and fully identical to that of receiving a shock on a 100A fused circuit. Identical. Literally.

No it isn’t. I literally just told you you can buy 15A rated extension cords in Japan in the comment you’re replying to. 15, is in fact less than 20, just fyi.

Wrong. Again. The current limit imposed by the internal resistance of your body at voltages in the range of 100-200 is a few hundred milliamps. Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself, and anything higher than 100 mA going through your heart is already lethal anyway. You’re gonna be dead 200 times over waiting for your 20A fuse to save you. The power that will pass through your body depends exclusively and solely on the voltage. The capacity and fusing of the circuit is utterly irrelevant, unless it’s fused at like 40 MILLI amps.

ANY cable being driven above it’s rated load is a fire hazard. There are healthy margins in those ratings, so going slightly over is likely not going to have any affect, but those margins are for good reason (namely people like you thinking it’s fine to plug a 15A cable into a 20A circuit without external fusing or current limiting), and deliberately overloading any part of an electric circuit is ALWAYS dangerous and stupid.

And what about 7A cables you can get in japan ? you can explicitly get 0.75mm² cables, which are only rated to 7Amps. Just as confident of blasting 20A through those ? Almost 9 times the amount of waste heat being generated in the core than at it’s max rated load.

Your device could slowly be melting itself into a pile of burning plastic, as long as it’s drawing less than 16 Amps to do so, the breakers will not trip. As I’ve pointed outñ

And in fact, the fused plugs actually make it way MORE likely for something to trip on a device side fault in the UK, because the current only has to be like 3Amps to kill the fuse. In every other place of the world, current needs to be at least 16A before anything trips.

I address that point, quite literally, in a later a paraph where I write

Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself

So what happened here ? Did you not read my comment ? Did you not understand it ? Or did you read it understand, and then continue to pretend like I haven’t already explicitly addressed this anyway ?

Here’s a list of prior arguments I’ve made, that you fully ignored. Until.you give me s good faith really to THE ENTIRETY of each argument,. I’m ignoring you.

The internal resistance of drastically undersized wiring may not be capable of passing sufficient current to overload the household breaker

Yeah. If you undersized a en entire houses ring circuit at AWG24, then indeed a 30A fuse wouldn’t be tripped. Though on the plus side, to even achieve it you would need to undersize the wire to such a massive degree that the wire itself just becomes a fuse.

In a our real world overhere, of fucking course a ring circuit can pass enough current to trip it’s breaker, and it’s fucking laughable to claim they can’t.

Here again, you’re demonstrating my exact point, despite claiming that what I am saying is “completely untrue”: The rest of the world builds its appliances to tolerate at least that 16A fault. For the UK to use that exact same manner of protection, they would need to build their appliances to tolerate a 30A fault. The same appliance would need a much heavier power cord in the UK than in the EU.

No they don’t. They can actually use much smaller power cords. Because there’s a fuse in the plug itself. If the plug itself has 1A fuse, then no matter what happens, the maximum amount of current the device can ever consume is 1A, so 1A is the highest fault current that device will ever have to handle. The UK system actually makes fault protection on the device side much better and easiest.

The value is being transported from point a to b. How anyone with a straight face can argue that low leg toom is an airline providing “zero value” is a fucking mystery to me. Like do you buy plane tickets for the sole purpose of sitting comfortably in a flying tube for shits and giggles, with no regard to destination or origin ?

And also, THEY ALREADY DON’T. The profit margins on the completely basic, zero extras or add ons econeomy seat are ALREADY close to 0 for most airlines. Negative for some.

You do know that tickets for those nice spacious old timey flights you’re dreaming of were upwards of thousands of dollars, adjusted for inflation, even for the cheapest seat on a domestic flight.

There are no profits to cut on Economy calls seats. You seem to have no clue how airlines actually make their profit. And it’s not from economy seats. Those are already sold by airlines for virtually no profit. They make their profits from baggage and service upgrades, higher classes like business, and in the US credit card reward programs.

Making economy seating more spacious WILL lead to higher costs for everyone, because ther is no mentionable margin on the current prices.

Also, cramped aircraft are good for the environment. I’d rather everyone have to be slightly uncomfortable for a few hours than needing to spend 3 times the aircraft and cause 3 times the pollution to transport the exact same number of people, but in more comfortable planes.

I covered that. Different rating. That 15A cord will survive a 20A fault. Its rated at 15A because the voltage drop will be out of spec at 20A draw, not because it will be a fire hazard at 20A. You will be able to get enough current through that 15A cord to trip the 20A breaker. You might not be able to get 20A through a 5A cord before the cord catches fire.

ANY cable being driven above it’s rated load is a fire hazard. There healthy margins in those ratings, so going slightly over is likely not going to have any affect, but those margins are for good reason (namely people like you thinking it’s fine to plug a 15A cable into a 20A circuit without external fusing or current limiting), and deliberately overloading any part of an electric circuit is ALWAYS dangerous and stupid. And what about 7A cables you can get in japan ? you can explicitly get 0.75mm² cables, which are only rated to 7Amps. Just as confident of blasting 20A through those ? Almost 9 times the amount of waste heat being generated in the core than at it’s max rated load.

My point is that UK appliances are specifically not designed to trip UK breakers in a fault. US devices are.

In every jurisdiction where fuses are not required in plugs, appliance standards require the appliance to be able to trip the household breaker. This is a fundamental concept of electrical safety.

Nope, again completely untrue. Breakers are only required to trip if the circuit becomes overloaded.

Your breakers don’t, and can’t give a shit about what’s happening on the other side of the outlet.

Your device could slowly be melting itself into a pile of burning plastic, as long as it’s drawing less than 16 Amps to do so, the breakers will not trip. As I’ve pointed out, repeatedly already, and you have repeatedly ignored, breakers are solely and exclusively for protecting the wire from overheating /overloading.

And in fact, the fused plugs actually make it way MORE likely for something to trip on a device side fault in the UK, because the current only has to be like 3Amps to kill the fuse. In every other place of the world, current needs to be at least 16A before anything trips.

That’s actually false. You’re conflating the resistance of “skin” with the resistance if the “body”. Once you burn away that skin, your internal resistance drops substantially.

I address that point, quite literally, in a later a paraph where I write

Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself

So what happened here ? Did you not read my comment ? Did you not understand it ? Or did you read it understand, and then continue to pretend like I haven’t already explicitly addressed this anyway ?

At this point I think calling this behaviour accidental would be an insult to your intelligence, and just have assume that you know exactly what you’re doing, and are knowingly and deliberately arguing in bad faith and with intellectually dishonesty, so stop. Just go away. I’m done. You’re either fully incapable of, or unwilling too, engage in honest debate, so I’m not linger interested in continuing this.

And how exactly doe the same exact thing not ally to a branch Circuit suffering a break?

Stick your finger in a 20A outlet, and you’ll pull out a burned finger. Stick your finger in a 100A outlet, and you’ll lose your hand, or your life. More power will pass through you before the circuit can be interrupted

Did you just deliberately ignore everything I wrote ? Both 20 and 100amps are several hundred times more current than it needs takes to kill you. And the resistance of your body is way to high to pass more than a few hundred milliamps anyway.

For a given voltage, the outcome of recieving a shock on a 20A fused circuit is literally indistinguishable and fully identical to that of receiving a shock on a 100A fused circuit. Identical. Literally.

Our appliance wiring is rated to carry 20A from the receptacle throughout the appliance, or to a secondary current limiter within the appliance. Since the wiring is rated to the 20A the circuit can provide, we don’t need the secondary fuse in the plug. This is part of our appliance wiring standards.

No it isn’t. I literally just told you you can buy 15A rated extension cords in Japan in the comment you’re replying to. 15, is in fact less than 20, just fyi. Are you deliberately ignoring half of what I wrote ?

Obviously. That has been part of my point the entire time: You use fewer, higher wattage circuits. UK circuits carries more power to pass through your body than a comparable circuit elsewhere in the world. The household wiring standards in the rest of the world are more restrictive than they are in the UK. You are repeating the exact points that I (and others) have been making from the start.

Wrong. Again. The current limit imposed by the internal resistance of your body at voltages in the range of 100-200 is a few hundred milliamps. Maybe an amp or two if you stick electrodes inside yourself, and anything higher than 100 mA going through your heart is already lethal anyway. You’re gonna be dead 200 times over waiting for your 20A fuse to save you. The power that will pass through your body depends exclusively and solely on the voltage. The capacity and fusing of the circuit is utterly irrelevant, unless it’s fused at like 40 MILLI amps.

UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps.

Man I fucking love how you literally just picked out the first line in a comment pointing out another one of the things you said that are objectively untrue (a dead short not blowing a UK ring fuse) and ignore everything else in the comment. You must have seen the comment to quote part of it, and yet you ignore it entirely. You’re clearly and demonstrably not arguing in good faith.

Reread my comments from the start

That’s fucking rich, when I’ve literally explicitly addressed every single point you made, whilst you seemingly deliberately ignore half the ones I make. Literally repeating falsehoods I disproved in the comment you’re replying to, whilst you’re replying.

Breakers on UK household circuits are designed to allow considerably more power than comparable breakers around the world.

That is utterly irrelevant. Circuit breakers and fuses are designed for the exclusive and sole purpose of protecting the circuit from being overloaded. A 100 amp circuit with a 100 Amp fuse is exactly as safe as a 20 amp circuit with a 20 amp fuse or a 5 amp circuit with a 5 amp fuse. If the voltage is above ~100-200V, all 3 of these are hundreds of times the amount of current it would take to deliver a fatal electric shock, and none of those fuses would trip from you getting shocked.

To protect humans from electric shock we use residual current devices, which trip at 10’s of Milli amps. And here’s actually an advantage of a ring circuit. It forces you to place RCD protection on every single outlet in the building, instead of skimping on costs by just putting it on the branches that legally require one, like bathrooms and kitchens.

Those fuses are not needed in Japanese (or North American, or most other) plugs. We don’t need to protect the “external wiring” separately from the household wiring: the household circuit breaker is rated lower than the “external wiring”. Drawing a direct short on the “external wiring” in a UK circuit is not sufficient to trip the UK circuit breaker in the UK distribution panel; they need a secondary current limiter (a fuse) to provide that function.

That’s just demonstrably untrue. An individual branch of a household circuits in both the US or Japan can easily be fused at 20A (fun fact: European branch circuis, because of the higher voltage that you were raging against in your first comment, can handle more electric load whilst having SMALLER 16A breakers). In both Japan and America you can buy extension cords rated for 10 or 15A. So no. You just told a straight up, unequivocal lie there. And a dead short on a 240V network will literally trip everything. UK ring circuits are fused at 30 Amps. A dead short at 240V with only the internal resistance of copper wiring would pull current in the neighborhood of 1000 amps. 1000, somewhat famously, being slightly larger than 30, making this another lie there.

And even if it weren’t a lie, how on earth does the location of the fuse make a difference in safety here ? If it’s in the wall or in the plug, as long as it’s there and does it’s job both would be equally safe.

The function provided by those shutters is achieved in the Japanese wiring by lower voltage, narrow holes in receptacles (allowable because they don’t need as large a contact to safely carry the lower rated current) and whole-house AFCI/GFCI.

No it isn’t. 110V is still dangerous to a child, and if you think otherwise I hope to god you aren’t, or ever become a parent. Also, as I stated, your plugs literally allow for an electric shock to happen whilst unplugging them because they’re so terrible. As for whole house GFCI, that is by necessity included in a ring circuit that wants GFCI on any outlet at all.

Also you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the relationship of current and voltage. For a given electrical appliance, with a given wattage, a lower voltage means it needs to draw more current, not less. That’s why the US Japan need to have 20A household breakers, whereas in the EU 16A branches are more than enough, whilst still providing a higher load handling capability than a 20A Japanese fuse. A 1000 Watt microwave plugged into a Japanese socket will draw over twice as much current as a 1000 Watt microwave plugged into an EU or UK socket (which also means it produces 4 times the amount of electrical waste energy as heat, though that is generally negligible for short household cable runs either way. Can make a difference on the scale of a country though).

And don’t think I didn’t notice you just quietly avoided responding to any of my arguments pointing out the obvious falsehoods in your voltage claim.

Frankly, at this point, all you’ve done is utterly convince me that you are totally and utterly unqualified to speak on this topic. Almost every claim you make is wrong. And not even just “slightly oversimplified/technically incorrect” wrong, just straight up demonstrably untrue.

The higher voltage has nothing whatsoever to do with ring circuits. The UK runs on the same 220-240V AC as all of mainland Europe. And Africa. And most of mainland Asia. And South America. And Oceania. And most of the middle east. So not quite “higher than any other country”

Also those two claims are diametrically opposed to each other. Unless UK people use over twice the amount of electricity than Americans, the higher voltage will lead to LOWER total current. That’s quite literally the specific and sole motivating factor behind choosing a higher grid voltage.

And the current a conductor can pass has nothing whatsoever to do with it’s safety. You could have 50 amps blowing through a circuit, if it’s at 12V you can still touch it without getting a shock. Your car battery is capable of peak currents of several HUNDRED amps, and those are considered safe enough to just carry around by random people with bare hands.

Again, the amount of current passed depends only on the voltage, which again, is the same in the UK as all of mainland Europe (and most of the rest of the world except America and Japan), and has been since the early 20th century, so I’ve no idea what you’re trying to go on about there.

And lastly, no it isn’t. For one, the child safety shutters on all UK outlets are certainly not contained in a Japanese breaker panel. Neither are the fuses in the plug, which protect the external wiring. And nor is the insulation on the lower legs of the contacts contained in a breaker panel. The Japanese plugs are basically the same as American. You can literally get an electric shock if you hold them wrong whilst unplugging. There’s exposed live contacts from when you start unplugging until the prongs break their connection to the outlet.

Basically everything you said is demonstrably false. I’ve rarely seen someone be this confident and this incorrect about something.

Reminds of the old pile of gold (empty) meme

I mean that is kinda exactly what the developers want to provoke with timed dialogue choices. Timed dialogue choices are a game design mechanic to try and get a player to answer on instinct/gut feeling, rather than over analysing and trying to optimise the dialogue.

You not getting to think about it long is very much the intended effect, and allowing a pause would entirely defeat it.

There are of course definite accessibility concerns that should be considered and worked around, such as people with dyslexia who may not be able to properly parse the dialogue options before the timer runs out, but as a game mechanic I think forcing the player to pick on instinct definitely has merit. It helps make the game more immersive, because it puts you under the same pressure to react as your character is in the story right now, and it can lead to more interesting and ultimately enjoyable games by forcing players to potentially make a mistake, and having to find out a way to deal with the fallout.