Are you supposed to do it? No. Is it safe? Also no. But did lots of our grandfathers run their Christmas lights with an odd mismatch of cords including one of these? Yesss with a cigarette in one hand, a beer in the other, they sure as hell did.
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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Never even heard of this - is this an American thing?
Is burning down your house or electrocuting the linesman fixing your power outage because you backfed onto the transformer with your cheater cord and energized the neutral to 25kv? Fuck yeah! It's an American tradition!
(I'm Canadian btw and we have much the same stupidity here...)
TBH one does not simply patch into a UK-style ring circuit. Those who do have chosen death.
Those of us that remember our grandparents getting away with it are a product of survival bias.
The last extension cord you will ever need.
The lovely suicide cord.
Worth mentioning that it is plenty safe...if used appropriately (for attaching a generator to a house that doesn't have an inlet).
It's when it's not used appropriately that's a problem. And it's very easy to not use it appropriately.
Worth mentioning that they are absolutely not safe as the exposed prongs are energised. They are called suicide cords for a reason. All it takes is to plug the cord into a running generator or working outlet first and the exposed terminals are now live.
Its also worth noting that they very often kill linesmen working to desire the utility because people use them to hook up their generators without turning off their main breaker which back feeds onto the grid.
Proper generator inlets are very readily available and if you don't want to go that route, just plug your fridge and other important devices into your generator with extension cords.
And that would all count as "not using it correctly".
As I said, they are many ways to very easily use it incorrectly. Being overconfident about it is one, which is why I have an inlet and an interlock.
There are zero ways to use this cord correctly. Do not tell people otherwise. The proper generator connection is to, as you just said, use a proper generator inlet and interlock like you said you use. Anyone using a cord like this is using it incorrectly as there is no correct way to use it. Both the CEC and the NEC expressly forbid these. All it takes is for a child to unplug the wrong end and touch the exposed prongs and they will get shocked.
A proper generator inlet should have the male ends in a recessed inlet box connected to either a transfer switch or an interlocked generator panel.
Murphy's law says it will be used wrong, and as such it is a bad design and a bad idea.
There are alternatives that are better, this has only the advantage of being cheap.
It has the advantage of being easily made in an emergency situation.
Idk, I think it's a worthwhile thought exercise to know the wrong ways to do something, in case the situation ever arises where you need to.
To a certain extent, yes.
Like it's a good idea to drink from a ditch if that's the only water. Better than dying of thirst anyway.
at least it's short enough that it will only reach two plugs on the same panel, thereby guaranteeing that the first things that blow are breakers.
Would that only happen if one outlet were wired backwards (hot to neutral and vice-versa)?
If both outlets are wired correctly, as I'm envisioning it, the extension cord is parallel to the existing branch.
Same if both outlets are wired (the same) incorrectly.
But if one outlet is wired correctly and one has its poles swapped, then you are shorting hot directly to neutral...
But also being a 3-prong outlet...assuming everything is wired correctly...the short would either be redirected to ground and either trip the breaker or trigger a GFCI...no?
IANAElectrician. Just a high dude thinking about circuits.
Worth mentioning that the point of a suicide cord like this isn't to connect two outlets together...really no reason to do that...it's usually used to hook up a generator (or other load-center, like say a campground plug) to a branch circuit when the home/rv/load doesn't have an inlet. It's also extremely dangerous if used incorrectly, and there are several ways to very easily use it incorrectly.
If both outlets are wired correctly, as I’m envisioning it, the extension cord is parallel to the existing branch.
You can't just branch and reconnect AC power lines at random points.
Or rather, you can, maybe only once though.
In a residential setting with reasonable extension cable length & gauge, and reasonable loads you actually kinda can. Impedance and phase mismatches won't matter on those scales. In fact, that's basically what a ring circuit is.
Anecdote: my grandparents basically had an "accidental ring circuit" in their old house for like 40 years. It was only noticed when they hired an electrician to upgrade the wiring for an electric stove
You are forgetting the plug on the knob that will plug it in
Yeah, not what I need. I need NEMA 5-15 to CAT6 adapter
the P in PoE stands for Pulverization
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I must have gotten pale when some festival organizer handed me the end of a cable with a male plug. 'Your electricity supply, here you go!'
Me: '... ???'
Organizer, still waving the cable end around: 'Just use an adapter!' (he barely managed to omit the 'stupid woman' in his answer ...)
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HDMI, C to C, etc. Cables
Electricians don't deal with HDMI or C cables, that's probably an electronics engineer job or IT
uhlala plugging two USB cables require an electronics engineering degree... /s
Electricians like in electricity, I guess
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Ok i get the electrician joke, but what is this love wins thing? Its like a screenshot of two posts and the bottom is cut off
Bc when you plug something into the socket wrong, it always causes a full nuclear explosion! Yeesh, how did you not know this already...? (/s)
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