Illusionist David Blaine made a return last night with an electrifying stunt.
The 39 year old is spending three days and nights standing in the middle of a million volts of electric currents streamed by tesla coils.
He calls the stunt "Electrified: One Million Volts Always On."
The stunt, which is currently ongoing at Pier 54 in Manhattan, is being streamed live on YouTube, with viewing locations in London, Beijing, Tokyo and Sydney. Viewers at the stations are able to control the coils, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Blaine is going without food, water or sleep for 72 consecutive hours.
For the stunt, Blaine is standing on a 20-foot platform on a pier, wearing a chainmail bodysuit, which makes him the electrical carrier between himself and the currents.
"I had wanted to do this for years," he told reporters at a preview on Tuesday, according to MSNBC. "Being in the middle of a lightning storm, it feels so amazing, being in an environment you shouldn't be in."
Although the stunt seems dangerous, some critics are saying it's perfectly safe.
"He has a conducting suit, all the current is going through the suit, nothing through his body," John Belcher, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Life's Little Mysteries. "There is no danger in this that I see. I would do it, and I am 69 years old and risk-averse. I just would have to take a nap."
Although the voltage seems high, it's the strength of the current, measured in amps, that makes the electricity deadly. And the electric current produced by a typical Tesla coil is low.
"To me, the amazing thing is that he plans to stand there for 72 hours, not that there's a million volts or these impressive lightning bolts passing through the Faraday cage that surrounds him," Columbia University physicist William Allen Zajc told Reuters.
Click here to view the live stream.
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