Like being struck by lightning: what happens when a person is struck by lightning

Around 2,000 thunderstorms are recorded every day around the world, but what is lightning, what is that broken streak in the sky and does it really pose such a danger?

Now there will be some fun physics, but you won’t be bored. How is lightning born? It starts with a vapor cloud that cools so much that the droplets within it turn into tiny ice crystals. The ice floes fly away and collide with other larger formations which, in turn, rush downward. From this collision electricity is born.

When the difference between the charged particles becomes too great, lightning occurs in the cloud.

It is very difficult to say how many people die from lightning. The data ranges from several thousand to several tens of thousands of deaths per year.

The consequences of a blow to the human body are unpredictable – imagine what kind of energy discharges pass through the flesh. The most serious are direct hits, when lightning directly hits a person and it becomes part of the energy channel. Incredible amounts of electricity then flow through the body, and this happens very quickly. If a person does not die, the results of such a strike are always disastrous: lightning can cause internal burns, organ damage, explosions of flesh and bone, and damage to the nervous system.

But lightning can be “caught” not only directly; you can also be hit just by standing on the ground. “Step potential” is to blame. The earth’s surface can serve as a conductor of electricity, then the electricity will reach human feet and pass through the whole body.

A lightning strike can cause vision loss, seizures, paralysis and sometimes cause chronic headaches and memory problems. Problems arise from several sides at once: from electricity, high temperatures and shock waves.

And a bizarre mark in the form of a branched tree will probably remain on the human body forever. Such traces are called “Lichtenberg figures” or “lightning flowers”.

They appear on the human body after a few hours – this damage is caused by rupture of blood vessels under the skin.

James Church (55 years) rememberthat upon impact he heard a deafening roar and it became so bright that it burned his eyes. He woke up a few meters from where he was. Lying on his back in the dark, he felt his body paralyzed. A few minutes later, Mr Church finally managed to retrieve his mobile phone and call for help.

This happened in Florida, the state with the most thunderstorms in the United States.

“The treatment lasted 30 days,” James remembers. “And all this time I was haunted by crushing pain, painkillers didn’t help, it hurt non-stop.”

One of his lungs was almost completely burned. Despite everything, the man recovered.

The rarest case in history bears the name of Roy Sullivan, the lightning darling. He was struck by lightning seven (!) times. He was a ranger in a Virginia national park and was struck by lightning seven times between 1942 and 1977. He received the second shock while in a truck, which functioned like a Faraday cage, c That is, electricity was flowing around Sullivan, but he only received a small portion of it.

The fifth and sixth strikes hit Sullivan from the small clouds that Roy himself swore were following him. On June 25, 1977, lightning sent Roy Sullivan to a hospital bed with burns to his chest and abdomen. Roy just wanted to go fishing – it was his seventh time. After which, moreover, the unfortunate man still had to fight the bear, which came hoping to catch fish.

Even Sullivan’s wife, who was struck by lightning while hanging laundry, understood this. What can I say, lucky people! Sullivan died at the age of 71, shooting himself in the temple.