Just wondering - does anyone here routinely wear a wriststrap ? I'd bet it's a small minority.
.and has anyone ever actually killed anything with static? I certanly haven't. PLenty of other ways, but not static.
I never damaged a device with static -- until I did.
In Houston TX (humid the whole year), I worked on potentially sensitive circuits all the time for years without ever damaging a part. Of course, based on my experience, I was not too concerned about ESD.
Then I moved to North TX, into a small carpeted apartment, and when setting up a home lab (with poor ESD protection), damaged a pin-driver board of a Data I/O programmer the one time I opened it up without a without a wrist strap. I was shocked (pun intended.), and could hardly believe it. Subsequently, over the past 10 years, I've been much more consistent about using ESD protection, especially for any professional work, but occasionally I've lapsed doing R&D stuff, and on a subset of those occasions, I've experienced the occasional failure of a chip, and one heartbreaking DSO injury. (The damage was sudden, after I replaced a floppy drive, and I know which chip went bad because a year later I finally tracked down I replaced the chip (a video DAC). I also get back boards from New York all too often with the same damaged analog inputs on a PIC chip, especially in the winter. I can say that my subsequent board revisions all have much better attention to ESD built in, as does the overall packaging plan. The bonus is that you can breathe much easier during compliance testing (which is less stringent than real world ESD events.)
One more thing--it is well known that small ESD discharges may not destroy a chip, but can cause it to function out of spec, or to prematurely fail remote from the event. So just because a chip seems to work in circuit doesn't mean it has not been damaged. That's why even in humid climates, it's worth taking at least rudimentary precautions for hobby and R&D work, and full precautions for delivered final products.
Dave