My comments on this topic tread close to political discussion, IMHO the only sort of political discussion appropriate here: the politics of electricity delivery and use. However I understand ahead of time that this post might require 'moderation'.

Electrical safety is both relative and random. Doing things 'by the book' is not an absolute guarantee of safety, nor is not following electrical code mean a certainty of fire, death, and destruction. More to the topic at hand, the evaluation of cost versus benefit where electrical safety is concerned is very much about politics and profit.

Electricity is very easy to control and direct, and a surprisingly small amount of copper and insulation will serve to deliver a tremendous amount of power to a load. As long as nothing goes wrong, the 'zip cord' and 'twist and tape free air splices' that we comment about in the photo forum will work just fine. 14ga conductors will _probably_ be just fine on that 30A water heater, 100W lamps will probably work just fine in lamps that say 'use max 60W lamp'.

However, if there is any breakdown in the conductors or insulation directing the electricity, then that tremendous power will be delivered to the fault.

Most of a _proper_ installation is not the stuff actually necessary to deliver power to the load, but instead the stuff necessary to remain safe when something goes wrong. You simply do not need 14ga wire, junction boxes, wire nuts, or even circuit breakers to run a 120V 60W lamp. If everything worked absolutely perfectly, you could use 22ga enameled magnet wire, not in any sort of cable, snugly wrapped around the meter terminals and simply run on the surface to the lamp. Everything beyond this bare minimum is concession to the fact that things go wrong, and we want to remain safe when things go wrong. Exactly how much redundancy and protection is really worth it is _very_ difficult to quantify.

With a _proper_ electrical installation, the risks are _very_ low. So low that we don't really have a good way of even calculating the odds. And herein lies the problem. People have a very hard time properly juggling very low risks with very bad consequences. Given the choice between not having electricity, an _inexpensive_ approach that has a 1 in 10000 chance of killing someone, or an expensive approach that has a 1 in 100000000 chance of killing someone, 'common sense' would select the inexpensive approach. ('Common sense' is wrong in this case...) (note, I've pulled the numbers out of thin air; I don't know the real risks.)

At some point, even if you take the time to do the math properly, and consider all of the side effects and their costs, you hit a wall where you have to assign a dollar value to a human life, and have to evaluate extremely low risks where there really isn't sufficient data to make a good judgement. Once you hit that point, the arguments are very much about politics.

Code and listing are essentially a _political_ process whereby 'people who should know' are creating their best efforts as to where to balance the costs versus risk reduction aspects of electrical installation. But this balance most certainly includes economic self interest; just look at how the whole AFCI thing played out. Or for another example where politics, safety, economics, and human death have played out with a very unclear result is nuclear versus coal power.

The _fact_ is that if this 'suicide cord' is correctly used, it will do the job without harming anyone. Correctly used includes things like shutting off the main, connecting everything prior to starting the generator, manually shedding sufficient load, etc. There are very real risks when using this cord, including the very real possibility of simply forgetting to do things like throw the main breaker, however with only a little bit of common sense the risks are quite small.

The risks are so large that neither the NEC nor the listing agencies are willing to say 'safe enough', and the risks are large enough that they have killed people, and I would never advocate using this sort of installation, but none the less the risks are very small. Essentially a proper cost versus benefit analysis says that this cord is far too dangerous to use, but such an analysis weighs a small risk against the cost of killing someone.

IMHO this system is actually pretty darn close to something acceptable. Change the gender of the cord and add a breaker interlock system, and you have something much safer; not as safe as a full fledged transfer switch system, but probably safe enough for listing. ( I know that screw down sheet metal breaker interlocks are available for some residential panels.)

Sorry for the rant. I agree that the particular item discussed is (and should not be) acceptable. But ECs _do_ have an economic interest in proper installation of acceptably safe systems, and the decision of what is 'safe enough' is riddled with economic interests.

-Jon