What are the possible ways a computer can kill you?
What are the possible ways a computer can kill you?
This question came into my mind yesterday, when I caught the smell of burning wires in my room. Turns out, my power supply's fan was jammed by my pen's ink cartridge (Don't ask why)
Fire
- If you ignored the smell, maybe your house would burn down.
Electrocution
- If you for example tried to disassemble your power supply.
Blunt trauma
- If you have a big computer on a shelf it might fall and land on you.
This is especially dangerous if you're a data hoarder. It's a slippery slope that can result in you scalping stuff like old DVRs for drives. Your computer might get very heavy.
The electrocution risk would actually last even after it's unplugged: Power supplies can have big capacitors in them.
I actually did #2 because I was fixing one. If you REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING and have ALL THE TOOLS AND PROCESSES NECESSARY and the power supply is worth a few hundred dollars, it MIGHT be worth it.
Guess what? I still blew one up.
Stay safe friends. Recycle it and buy a new one.
I have 9 HDDs in mine and the fucker probably weighs 75lbs. It's always fun when I need to carry it to the kitchen island to do maintenance on it.
It could deny your health insurance
It could give you bad information on making DIY cleaning chemicals.
I expect depression / self harm from doom-scrolling and social media consumption is up there.
Now that so many things we use every day have computers in them, many causes of death are related to computers.
Many modern cars (especially electric cars) are basically computers that drive; cars kill many people. The same applies to planes. Software bugs in medical software might cause you to receive improper care, which could kill you. Computers might control a lock which might lock you in a room until you die of dehydration or starvation.
I think that what happened with the Boeing 737-MAX crashing was that they had a sensor that if it got stuck, the software was programed to make the plane pitch down, even overriding the pilot's own input. That resulted in the deaths of 346 people.
If it's Boeing, I ain't going.
It could fall on your head and then you fall out window and land on the top of a hot air balloon and then bounce off that and hit a stack of geese who then honk so loudly that your clothes all blast off, especially your socks, causing you to further fall into a volcano and land on a recently-hardened piece of magma slag, while the noxious fumes cause you to pass gas, creating an explosion so big you get fired out of the volcano like a cannon and land on the moon, where you have nothing to eat but cheese so you develop a bad case of lactose intolerance and fart so bad that the man in the moon (who is a Newfie) picks you up and throws you back to earth, landing in a pool filled with poodles genetically engineered with piranha genes
Some more: Getting shot at after committing crime or other online activities. Or a sepsis from cutting yourself with the old, dusty, yet sharp metal parts.
In certain parts of the world, depending on the social status of the one using the computer, during an extended session of play, the paternal figure might beat you with jump cables.