[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by [527]phil

But you have to realize that although this is a high voltage system, the amperage is far less then the electric coming from your outlet.

While you are correct that a wall socket can deliver more current (typical breaker rating is 20A), it takes far less than that to kill a person.

Look here (you brought up Wikipedia earlier in this thread) for more on the physiology of electric shock.

You also said earlier that you have two capacitors of 500 uF each.

200 Volts x 1000 uF = 0.2 Coulomb, enough electric charge to deliver a peak electric current of 200 milliAmperes to a 1000 Ohm load; your body, for example, might be represented by about this resistance, depending on ambient humidity and how sweaty you are. That current will decay with a time constant of 1 second. Delivered to one hand while the other hand is on the return path, that current pulse is sufficient to put your heart into ventricular fibrillation. Of course you might be lucky and not present such an ideal circuit path to your heart on the first try, but your luck would not hold out forever if you kept trying again and again.

I strongly urge you to read up a bit more, and not to attempt experimental verification of the analysis above.