The meltdown

Is it better to be smart or careful?
In my case, I was neither, or maybe I'm guilty of thinking I was smart, and careful.

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I do know that I had my cables laid out on the batteries on the nose rack. I had made the cable from most positive (the + terminal at the beginning of the string) to the the Zilla B+ terminal and the cable that connects the nose rack to the motor rack. I was measuring the cable that interconnected two terminals of the motor when it happened.

There was a loud snap.
Sparks flew.
Smoke filled the air.
And the smell of something burning.

I quickly pulled a sparking cable off the battery rack it was touching, and it stopped.
After the smoke cleared the cursing began.

Evidently, the Zilla cable that was just set in place slid off the terminal and touched the rack. A 5/8" open end wrench qas touching the rack and a cable. Enough of the cables made contact to complete a dead short across the batteries frying one of them. The terminal was melted away, as was a piece of two cable clamps and my 5/8" wrench. There was what appeared to be gray paint splattered around, but it wasn't paint, it was the lead post that vaporized.

I would like you all to think I'm brilliant and don't make mistakes, but in reality, neither is true. I make mistakes just like everyone else. So the message for this post is: don't be smart or careful, be safe. Don't think it won't happen to you or that you can just be careful - avoid the situation entirely by not taking chances - be safe.