Standing in the ground is quite difficult unless you're buried. Most people that are buried in the ground are already dead, and so cannot be killed by an electric shock. They may have died previously from electric shock. If you're fully buried in the ground, and not dead, you will be soon, but from asphyxiation not electric shock. This excludes lightning which could kill you even if you're buried a little ways down. You could also be buried on an exposed power line. That could kill you. If you're partially buried then you can't move, so unless you are buried on an exposed power line, your chances of being killed by a shock is slim. Of course being partially buried you could be hit by lightning, in which case you have a good chance of being killed by electric shock. The good thing about being buried though is you are now shorter, reducing the chance of being the path of least resistance for electrical current from lightning You could be in a cave or tunnel. If the cave or tunnel has no power lines or outlets then the chances of dying of electrical shock are extremely slim. If there are power lines or outlets the chances of being killed by an electric shock is probably the same in your house. That probability seems to be directly proportional to intelligence and obeying common sense rules. In all cases, electrical current travels in a loop. If your body becomes the path of least resistance for a loop, and enough current flows through your heart, or enough current flows to destructively heat important bits of your body, you can die. If ground is part of that, as in lightning and generally in electrical mains, then yes it's much easier to die if you are standing on the ground than floating in air. If you really want to reduce the resistance, stand in a puddle and lick your finger, then...ah never mind, I better not say anymore.
your answer is very poor. a same question is that why birds do not get killed when they stand on the wire.
Birds on an electric line provide no path to ground, which would complete an electrical loop. A circuit has to have both ground (or negative) and an energy source (normally positive, but not always....telephone is -48vDC, for example). Regardless, something must touch two different potentials (such as ground and +120vAC) in order to conduct energy through themselves. The birds, by touching the electric lines, are not killed unless they touch the lines and something of a lesser or greater energy potential at the same time. Squirrels can be electrocuted on lines more often because they'll stretch from the line to something else, such as a transformer or other ground source, and that's what kills them. Touching only one or the other will not, although one could receive a heck of a charge by touching an electric line even if insulated from other surfaces, much like a high energy static electricity jolt. Look up videos on technicians who work on the lines via helicopter. You'll see them reach out and touch the line with what looks like a grounding rod, and it's used to bring the aircraft and the line to the same energy potential. The aircraft may be at a different potential because it and it's rotor crate a static charge on their surfaces. The rod allows the energy difference to pass from one to the other without a human in the middle. If that aircraft or rod touched a ground source and the electric line at the same time, it'd fry lots of stuff on that aircraft and potentially bring it down if the engine's electronics were damaged. Same theory as a cheap battery tester. Touch one end to only one end of a battery, nothing happens. When you complete the circuit by touching both ends with the tester, you get a reading. Electrical potential and electrical current are very different, but their difference explains what you asked. Google electrical potential and electrical current...much better explanations than what I provided I'm sure. Lastly, when you touch something in a low humidity environment, there's often a static shock. It's momentary and not harmful, but it brings you and the surface you touch to the same potential very quickly. Same with the electric lines and the birds, only that's an AC voltage where a static discharge is not.
A couple of different kinds of electric shock. For it to hurt you, you have to have a complete path, basically from the power station to ground which goes back to the power station. Birds don't make that connection by just standing on a wire. Regular household electricity in the US. It isn't the electricity that kills you but the cycles per second of 60 which puts the heart into fibrillation. Old electricians will stand on one foot, say the right foot while touching a live wire with the right hand to test for power. That way the path for the current misses the heart. Don't try this at home. High power wires. Some high power wires have very high voltage which has low current and less power loss. Touch one of those and they can burn right through you or even blow parts of you off. That is the reason you stay away from downed lines. Lightening, same as high power wires.
How does one stand in the ground? and even if you were somehow standing in the ground the answer would be no, but it would really depend on where you were standing.
I apologize for my poor answer, I thought it was thorough. The question of the bird on a wire, I assume you mean power line, is a different question. A bird does not get killed when they stand on a power line because both of their little feet are at the same electrical potential (voltage). Even though the voltage is switching polarity 120 times a second (or 100 times a second depending on location) both their little feet change at the same time. Now if their feet were far enough apart, or the electrical frequency high enough, they could be fried. However, with 60 or 50Hz power their little feet would have to be thousands of kilometers apart, or the frequency would have to be so high that electricity wouldn't travel in the wire very well at all.
Depends on all kinds of conditions, the ground resistance, the voltage potential, ac or dc power, how moist/wet your skin is (rain/sweat), and body resistance, kind of shoes/bare feet, to get killed by electric shock. But if you stand knee deep in the ground the total resistance is lower than when standing straight on the floor or ground, because ground (soil) is often more moist than top material (grass, leaves, tiles, conrete, wood, tarmac, vinyl) Chance of electrocution increases when standing in ground with bare feet.
Correct, at least about the path intended to miss the heart. One of the worst case scenarios is a hand to hand path right thru the heart. The cycles, however, are almost irrelevant. It's the amount of current flow that is critical. Ground fault circuit interrupters made for personal protection against accidental shock are designed to trip at around 6 milliamps because risk of adverse effect on the heart starts at around 10 milliamps. Thus low voltage systems such as 12 volt car batteries, 16 volt AC doorbell transformer output and 24 volt AC thermostats are not normally a shock hazard because their usual potential is not high enough to push significant amount of current across the resistance of the human body. Conversely, a person can play with million-volt streamers if the current capacity of the power source is sufficiently restricted. However, low voltage systems can cause harm if their short current capacity is high enough to generate high heat. Direct shorts can even cause batteries to explode. Benign circuits can also generate a higher jolt if you're on the wrong end of the coil circuit when its power supply is being disrupted. Also, foolish practices can bring out the worst. A witness told me about a homeowner who was running a live thermostat wire through his attic using his teeth to keep a grip on the cable as he crawled along. Suddenly he came crashing thru the sheet rock ceiling and had to be evacuated by ambulance service because his mouth and face swelled up monstrously. My uncle could test across a live 120 volt circuit by lightly bridging it with his thumb and forefinger of one hand. I tried, but it was always way too much. I noted that an ohmmeter on the high scale showed comparatively low skin resistance of a coworker who was a heavy smoker. Back to the OP. If your car ends up in contact with a live high voltage wire that is downed from overhead utility lines, don't step out of the car. Make sure you exit by jumping clear so that you're not touching the vehicle when your feet hit the ground.
Yes, current is critical but it takes more DC current to kill you than it does AC and the reason for that is the Hertz in AC will induce ventricular fibrillation of the heart earlier. For instance, with DC that starts around 200mA where AC starts around 40mA. Possible burns start at 500mA for DC and 100mA for AC.
