Seizures, electrocution, death: Has Tough Mudder gone too far?

Paul Nicholsen, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound Web developer who does CrossFit and runs marathons, decided to take part in a Tough Mudder race in New Jersey with friends in 2013. He was physically prepared for the 10- to 12-mile running, endurance and teamwork-based competition: He’d done one of the races before, on top of lots of other similarly extreme courses.

Still, the last obstacle before the finish line took him by surprise — a mini-jungle of wires that deliver a shock, known in Tough Mudder parlance as “electroshock therapy.”

When a dehydrated Nicholsen tried to cross it, a zap of 10,000 volts of electricity knocked him unconscious. (That’s twice the voltage used in a livestock fence and the same number used to contain the T-rex in “Jurassic Park.”)

He landed face-down in the dirt, and organizers rushed to cut the juice.

“I was pretty dazed afterward, and needed help getting to the medical station,” recalls the 35-year-old, a former Astoria resident who now lives in Washington, DC. He claims that staffers stationed at that particular obstacle “didn’t have the right training. I’m not a wuss; I just ran this whole race.”

Luckily, Nicholsen, who didn’t have insurance to go to the hospital, only ended up with a quarter-inch scar where his face hit the ground.

But the experience was enough to scare him away from the regular event, which will be held this weekend in Old Bethpage, LI, and in Jersey City, NJ, in November.

“It’s not fun or challenging,” Nicholsen says. “It’s just enduring something unpleasant — possibly unsafe — for the sake of doing it.”

Tough Mudder — the 5-year-old Brooklyn-based company whose competitions cross military training with “American Gladiators” and “Fear Factor”-style one-upmanship — might be a victim of its own success.

Its first race in May 2010 drew 4,500 people; today, between 7,000 and 10,000 people pay about $200 each to enter one of 60 annual races offered in seven countries. Roughly 2 million people have competed so far, and Tough Mudder is estimated to be worth more than $86 million, according to Business Insider.

It’s also inspired a growing $200 million annual “mud race” market, which means Tough Mudder has had to up the ante to stay competitive.

In recent years, it’s added electric shocks, tear gas and two fire-based events; one drops participants through a ring of fire, the other forces them to slide through a 5-foot flame into water.

And that has even longtime fans of the event asking: When is extreme too extreme?

Spencer Berg, a 31-year-old investment banker from the Upper East Side and two-time Tough Mudder competitor, drew the line at getting tear-gassed.

“That’s nuts. I have no interest in doing that. It’s gimmicky. It’s just them competing with other races … I can deal with cuts, bruises, scrapes, [but] running through fire and stuff like that, no one needs it. I’m done with Tough Mudder.”

Before they compete, contestants must sign a waiver that reads in part: “I acknowledge that the TM [Tough Mudder] event is an extreme test of my physical and mental limits that carries with it inherent risks of physical injury. Inherent risks are risks that cannot be eliminated completely (without changing the challenging nature of the TM event) regardless of the care and precautions taken by TM.”

It goes on to release Tough Mudder “from any and all claims, actions, suits, demands, losses and other liabilities in relation to any death, physical or mental injury . . . resulting from the inherent risks of the TM event or the ordinary negligence of TM.”

Irritated by @ToughMudder after my second one never again. There are epic races out there that don’t muck you about #disappointed

— Sara McLean (@sara_21) September 12, 2013

Legalese hasn’t stopped two lawsuits from being filed against the company. Avishek Sengupta, 28, of Ellicott City, Md., died during a 2013 race in West Virginia, while attempting the “Walk the Plank” obstacle, in which competitors climb a wall and drop into a pool. He was submerged for an extended period of time.

It’s a relatively low-key challenge by Tough Mudder standards, and a coroner ruled it an accidental drowning. But the Sengupta family filed a wrongful death suit last year, claiming organizers didn’t provide adequate rescue divers at the event’s deep-water event. They’re seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

And just last month, Long Islander Christopher Jurs, 35, filed another lawsuit, saying he nearly lost his leg after his right knee was impaled by a jagged piece of metal under a pool of sludge in the “electroshock” portion of a 2013 race in Englishtown, NJ.

“[The metal] is a defect no one could have imagined. You can’t assume a risk like that,” his lawyer, Zandra D’Ambrosio, told The Post in July.

While Tough Mudder officials wouldn’t comment on ongoing cases, its CEO, Will Dean, has publicly defended the company’s safety record.

“‘If you look at a typical ski resort, skiing-related fatalities compared to that of a marathon are significantly higher,” he told the UK’s Telegraph. “I think we knew very early on that if we were in business for long enough, statistically, something would happen.”

Skiing is indeed far more risky: Out of every million people who ski each year, 54 die, according to the National Ski Areas Association.

But after EMS took 38 race participants to the emergency room at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa., and treated another 100 on-site, during a July 2013 weekend, emergency physician Dr. Marna Greenberg was troubled.

Patients suffered seizures, dehydration and fainting, and Greenberg later co-wrote a study criticizing the extremity of the event. She wants Tough Mudder to work more closely with local hospitals so they’re not blindsided by a sudden influx like she was. “There was no set-up for that,” she says.

Such tales of danger only attract more competitors, says Leah Lagos, a Manhattan-based clinical and sports psychologist. The race’s appeal lies in its ability to let participants “escape personal problems or everyday tedium” — part of what she calls “the normalization of what is extreme.”

And, she points out, confronting dangerous and uncomfortable situations “can build our resilience, strengthen our ability to cope under pressure and make it more likely we’ll bounce back from future adversity.”

According to Tough Mudder spokesman Ben Johnson, each new obstacle goes through a testing process involving outside engineers and fire and emergency medical professionals, and organizers file an internal report after every event.

Safety, he says, “is not a one-time process or procedure. It’s something we take to heart.”

Mudder officials say this weekend’s event will be staffed by 45 medical professionals along the course, at each obstacle and in the medical tent.

“We’re pretty adamant at the beginning of the event that no obstacle is mandatory,” Johnson says. “There’s no penalty or punishment if you don’t want to do something.” (The Spartan race, its most popular competitor, makes contestants do burpees if they fail an obstacle.)

But Tough Mudder fan Sergio Zenteno, 38, who manages a comic-book store and lives in Elmhurst, Queens, says you can’t test your limits by skipping the challenges that scare you.

“That’s just weak sauce,” he says. “Just go through it.”