  We report the experimental setup and overall results of the AARTFAAC
wide-field radio survey, which consists of observing the sky within 50$^\circ$
of Zenith, with a bandwidth of 3.2$\,$MHz, at a cadence of 1$\,$s, for
545$\,$h. This yielded nearly 4 million snapshots, two per second, of on
average 4800 square degrees and a sensitivity of around 60$\,$Jy. We find two
populations of transient events, one originating from PSR$\,$B0950$+$08 and one
from strong ionospheric lensing events, as well as a single strong candidate
for an extragalactic transient, with a peak flux density of $80\pm30$$\,$Jy and
a dispersion measure of $73\pm3\,\mathrm{~pc~cm^{-3}}$, We also set a strong
upper limit of 1.1 all-sky per day to the rate of any other populations of
fast, bright transients. Lastly, we constrain some previously detected types of
transient sources by comparing our detections and limits with other
low-frequency radio transient surveys.
