If capacitive storage is the mechanism here, as I believe it
is, then the energy may be seen to be high enough to be
"impressive" as follows
Use 30pf/ft = 158 nF/mile - say 160nF - about double what I
recalled for buried telephone communications cable PER
PAIR..

Imagine that there are about 6 separate wires - the
description of the cable suggested the possibility of a
large number of multiple cores (I choose 6 for obvious
reasons - choose your oiwn figures to suit). 6 x 160 =
approx 0.1uF. Charge this to 100 volts.

Now, any volunteers from amongst the ranks of the
electrically experienced to seize a 0.1uF cap charged to 100
volts? At higher, say 500 volts, there will be even fewer.
Surprisingly, even at 500 volts we only have a small
fraction of a joule here (0.5 x 0.1E-6 x 500^2) and yet
practical experience tells you you are going to get a nasty
shock from it. (Or, if it doesn't, grab hold and see :-)).
You would have to grab the ends of all pairs at once,
logistically difficult, but the danger is a real one.

I am vaguely disturbed by the thought that N wires in close
proximity may not produce N times the capacitance but no
doubt someone will comment on this (too lazy to go and find
textbook on fundamentals to refresh memory).

>I too am curious about the the specs on this cable. As a
reference, a small
>camera flash stores about 5 joules of energy. That's enough
to make some
>decent sparks, and more than enough to be dangerous. The
formula for
>capacitive energy storage is [C*V^2]/2. As an earlier
poster mentioned,
>RG-58 is approx 30pf/ft. When you do the math, you'd have
to charge about
>666 ft to about 1KV (probably wouldn't handle that) or
66666 ft to 100V to
>get 5 joules. That's 11 miles of cable. Or maybe this cable
is something
>really exotic... always possible, given the eclectic nature
of PicLister
>backgrounds.
>
>Reg Neale
>