The shock could also cause seizures or respiratory arrest. Immediately after being struck, the disruption the lightning would have caused to your heart's electrical rhythm could result in cardiac arrest, one of the leading causes of death in lightning strike victims. One victim recalled it as “ the pain of a thousand wasps stinging from within.” In the wake of a lightning strike And, of course, you can expect a whole world of pain. It’s not uncommon for the blast to rupture your eardrums, possibly leading to hearing loss. This is a pattern of scars that branches out across your body like the limbs of a tree, likely tracing the path the electricity took as it traveled through you. And if the lightning exits through your feet, the force could literally knock your shoes off.īlood vessels bursting from the electric discharge and heat might create something called a Lichtenberg figure on your skin. If you happen to be wearing any metal objects, like necklaces or a piercings, they could channel the electric current, superheating and searing your skin. Your cl othes might even be shredded by the explosive force of the surrounding air being superheated to up to 50,000 degrees F ( five times hotter than the surface of the sun). Your hair and clothing might singe or catch fire. Lichtenberg figures are a type of scarring that can occur when you've been struck by lightning.Ī lot can happen in the three milliseconds it takes for a lightning bolt to course through your body.Īs the lightning strikes and then exits your body, it will leave you with deep wounds, often accompanied with third degree burns. When the lightning hits the ground, it causes a trail of plasma that lights the sky with those telltale zigzags of blueish white light that we see as lightning. It can even exceed the power of a nuclear reactor. It races toward the ground at nearly 300,000 kilometers per hour, striking the ground with a power of 300 kV, up to 150 times stronger than an industrial shock. Lightning is the runaway force that discharges this field. This charge can be so powerful that it repels electrons, negatively charged particles, on the ground beneath it, causing the ground to become positively charged.Īs an insanely strong electrical field roils in the cloud above, an intense attraction builds between the cloud and the ground.
How lightning formsĪlthough we're still not sure what causes it, scientists believe that ice particles bumping together inside a cloud can cause an excess of negative charge to collect at the bottom of the cloud. Here’s what you should expect if you ever find yourself in the path of lightning. And of the roughly 500 people who are struck by lightning each year, about 90% survive. It often indicates a user profile.Īlthough it’s rare, with the odds of getting struck in your lifetime being roughly 1 in 12,000, every now and then a human will provide an attractive target for lightning bolts to unleash their power. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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