How to Survive a Lightning Strike (2014)

Rather it's a great choice of a title given the editors' incentives.

It's highbrow clickbait title with decent content

How to survive a lightning strike: Don't get hit by lightning.

I’ll confirm your experience with one even closer.

In HS I ran on our cross country team. One day at practice (after school), we had only made it less than a mile from the school when we heard a big thunderstorm coming and turned around to head back.

The storm came on super quickly, we were inundated with water, thunder all around; we picked up the pace to get back to school faster.

We were just a couple blocks from the school when lightning struck on the other side of the street. There was zero pause between lightning & thunder, it was simultaneous. It must have been about 8 meters away, or less.

We were all scared shitless & the run turned into a sprint. We all made it back fine.

There was no warning. When the lightning struck I could see it in my peripheral vision, and simultaneously also saw an electric arc from the sidewalk to the bottom of my front running foot. There was a tingly sensation but I only remember feeling that after the strike.

Also, it was LOUD, as in I couldn’t hear well for the rest of the day, and my ears were ringing for a week.

> been damn close ... 30m

> that your hair stands up ... is utterly false

Please stop, 30m is not close. This is advice given in wilderness first aid training for possible warning of being hit not a 30m miss.

I'm going to trust them over you.

*edit: should also say that in my WFA they said you may or may not feel it, and if you do feel it you may or may not have enough time to react to it. The only reaction you really have is "lightning position" which is a tight ball of a crouch. Lying down completely is thought to be more dangerous, so don't go diving.

Also I've seen lightning about 30m off as well, it struck the mouth of a wooded trail I was considering exiting, my eyes were focused on the exact spot it struck. Hesitation probably saved me, though it was blinding and deafening. Thunder that close is really something else, absolutely the most violent sound I've heard in person.

I was about 6m away from a boy killed by a lightning strike at the 1977 US Boy Scouts Jamboree. I did feel the static electricity on my skin and my ears rang for a few minutes.

I can confirm that hair stands up on end when conditions are ripe for a strike. I have had it happen. Particularly for those with thin, wispy air, it was really sticking up. We got out of there fast. So I would say the folk wisdom is not utterly false in that there are times when it does happen and in some of those there is enough warning to get away, but I certainly would not count on it. In another incident, I was within 100m of a lightning strike (with no warning). Similar to what others below said, the thing I remember most was just how loud it was. One person was killed, 10 hospitalized. A number of the victims were blinded temporarily (measured in hours not minutes).

Hair standing up in proximity to a thunderstorm is a real phenomenon [1], and it happened to a friend of mine while canoeing on a lake. It does not necessarily mean that you are about to be struck, and it is not, apparently, commonly reported by people who are struck, or were close to a strike.

Perhaps it requires an unusual combination of low humidity in the proximity of a thunderhead?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYq41HtUWWs

I guess I'll chime in on being closer to strikes. In case you don't know how a strike occurs, as the charges build up and the field starts having enough potential to exceed the breakdown voltage of the air, little "feelers" develop, extending both from the cloud and objects on the ground. When two connect, if you are close enough, you can here what sounds like a very loud click, immediately followed by the "explosion" of thunder. More like a blast/explosion that what you would hear from farther away.

Also, look in to "ground potential rise", which I learned all about after a lightning strike in my yard (while I was standing on the second floor of my house). Basically, the charge dissipates in the ground around a strike. This means that radially from the strike outward there is a voltage potential. And of course if you connect two points across the potential with less resistance than the ground, you get current flow. Incidentally, this is why you keep your feet as close together as possible if caught outside in a storm. And of course crouch so you aren't the tallest thing around.

My closest one was a tree outside my window while I was inside with an opened window (maybe 7m). And I certainly felt some sort of static electricity before, paired with a slight smell of ozone (how a laser printer can smell when you print a lot).

Boom and it was bright and incredibly loud. Nothing happened to me, but the tree burned on the inside.

I'm gonna join the "I've been closer" crowd. Twice, actually. I was outside in a storm when a tree was hit by lightning about 10 feet from me. The tree was split down the middle and rained debris all around me. A blue flame burned briefly and then disappeared. It was so close that the concussive force felt like being hit in the chest with a bat. Another time, I was standing on wet ground when lightning struck about 100 feet away. I felt the jolt of electricity through my shoes. Scared the crap out of me.

I did not feel my hair standing up in either case. But neither of these would have hit me so it may not be relevant.

The hair thing is a short range effect: if you were within say 10m then maybe. It's not intended for people with a mile or so.

As you say, if you're close enough to feel it, you will likely get a face full of the tree or whatever it hit before you have time to recognize and react...

Rubber tires and soles don't protect from a strike, no, but they do offer at least some protection from the step potential[0] a nearby strike would cause. Of course with everything being wet from the rain and all the protection is most likely rather limited.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_potential_rise

And often metal farming implements dragging the ground, and a vehicle that sometimes makes your head the highest thing from the ground. Maybe not the best high level evidence that tires on a car don't help.

You can't survive a lightning strike unless you get struck by lightning.

Getting struck while inside a car is much less dangerous. The metal of the car creates a poor but still useful Faraday cage around you, which means the bulk of the current does not pass through your body [0].

[0] https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/cars-can-be-safe...

Keep your feet together as well to make sure the voltage difference between your feet is as low as possible in case the strike is nearby but not a direct hit.

Lightning depends on the electric field exceeding the dielectric insulation of the air. Some random charge floating around eventually forms a current, and that is the "random" path the lightning bolt takes to discharge. Lightning rods are designed with very sharp tips, the high curvature of which leads to a higher local electric field. Thus, a lightning rod works to discharge to ground an area of air around the point and prevent a larger buildup of voltage.

[0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/184374/why-do-li...

No, this is a common misconception. Consider the difference in electrical potential between two trees that are 35 feet tall, and one that's 20 feet tall. Is there a difference? Yes, but it's not a big one, and when you consider the overall path length from the cloud to ground you're talking about a miniscule difference.

Additionally, there are other confounding variables. Taller trees are typically older, and have larger root systems. Maybe they're better grounded, relative to younger trees, and so they are better pathways. We just don't know enough yet to say for certain why lightning strikes where it does.

The only thing I will say, is that if you're outside and have nowhere to go, the best place is to be in a dense forest, but not close to any particular trees. The odds of you being directly struck in a forest are incredibly small.

Well not necessarily, in many cases tree stuck (and burned to rather beautiful pile of ashes) can be an insignificant one deep in the valley, while the ones on top of the hill will keep standing.

Or folks getting struck through open window in their room, while building has proper protection. We all have seen the pictures of real lightning, never straight path, rather sum of local optimums which may end up being a rather un-optimal path overall

Not necessarily, lightning is an extreme electrical phenomenon. I'm no way an expert, but from what I've read...

1. Lightning doesn't have to hit the tallest object. Electricity doesn't flow into the lowest-impedance path either. It's just probability at work - lightning is more likely to hit the tallest object, and when an object gets a hit, more current flows into the lowest-impedance path, but other path will receive their shares. "Electricity finds the path of least resistance" is only a rule-of-thumb when the resistance of one path is two order-of-magnitude smaller than other path, then approximately 99% of the energy is applied to the short circuit. But when you have a lot of different path with impedance of similar order-of-magnitude, every path will receive some energy.

If the object is a lightning protection system, it has incrediblly low impedance than other objects, so it will do its best to redirect all energy to ground and ensure that the probability of hitting other objections is very low, but still, if there's an unintended high impedance path within the protected system (e.g. two large metal structures are grounded separately, but not connected with a think metal bar, a voltage difference can develop between the two), then some energy won't be redirected to ground as intended and will attempt to flow through other objects with lower impedance, and it'll destroy other objects along the way. It's why we still see damages from time to time.

Worse, in nature there's no such conductor designed for lightning protection, all objects are vulnerable, it's just some are a bit more vulnerable to others, like the tallest tree.

2. Lightning doesn't have to hit you directly to cause injury. Recall Electrical Safety 101, if you connect a 110V/220V "hot" wire to a grounded object, the low impedance ground will keep the voltage of such object low to ensure safety. But if it's a HV line, it's another story, the Earth itself is not a perfect conductor, the point closer to the voltage source will have less resistance, thus a voltage gradient forms, there can be a significant voltage difference on Earth between your legs.

Something I learned recently was that lying on the ground might seem like a good idea, but it isn't the safest position. It is thought, though I think the science is kind of out still, that the safest position is basically squatting and holding your knees. IIRC, lying down increases the chance that a near strike will still send current over you.

Why It's Bad to be Struck by Lightning