Roy Cleveland Sullivan (February 7, 1912 – September 28, 1983) was an American park ranger in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Between 1942 and 1977, Sullivan was claimed to have been struck by lightning on seven occasions, surviving all of them.
The thought of being struck by lightning won't appeal to many people, but unfortunately for Roy C. Sullivan (USA), it happened to him a whopping seven times. And amazingly, he survived every single strike - each of which contained several million volts of electricity.
Walter Summerford isn't a household name, but is widely considered to be the world's most unfortunate man. Not only was he struck by lightning multiple times in his life, but once more after his death for good measure. It didn't take long for many to suggest that Summerford may not have simply been unlucky, but cursed.
"He did have burns to his chest from the electrical conduction that went through his body," he said. "It actually instantly stopped his heartbeat and stopped his breathing. "It is rare that you get somebody that has been basically electrocuted while they're in the water."
A person struck directly by lightning becomes a part of the main lightning discharge channel. Most often, direct strikes occur to victims who are in open areas. Direct strikes are not as common as the other ways people are struck by lightning, but they are potentially the most deadly.
A jolting, excruciating pain. “My whole body was just stopped—I couldn't move any more,” Justin recalls. “The pain was … I can't explain the pain except to say if you've ever put your finger in a light socket as a kid, multiply that feeling by a gazillion throughout your entire body.
The boy's father pulled him from the water at Little Lake, near Warilla Beach last Thursday after a lone lightning strike - a so-called "bolt from the blue" - knocked him unconscious. Lifeguards and an off-duty doctor worked to revive him.
Although the vast majority of lightning strike victims survive, the effects can be serious and long-lasting. Survivors have experienced debilitating injuries, burns and ongoing disability, including symptoms like seizures and memory loss.
Two children are recovering well in the hospital after being injured from a lightning strike on Wednesday evening. The boys, 13-year-old Jaden Alvarado and 7-year-old Isaac Martinez, were playing outside near their home in South Fort Worth when lightning struck a nearby tree.
Lightning is a major cause of storm related deaths in the U.S. A lightning strike can result in a cardiac arrest (heart stopping) at the time of the injury, although some victims may appear to have a delayed death a few days later if they are resuscitated but have suffered irreversible brain damage.
But the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are less than one in a million, and almost 90% of all lightning strike victims survive.
In the United States, the lifetime odds of being struck by lightning are only 1 in 15,300. In any given year, those odds increase to about 1 in 1.2 million. Interestingly enough, most people survive. If you are struck by lightning the chance of it being fatal is only 1 in 10, a 90% survival rate.
Commercial transport passenger planes are hit by lightning an average of one or two times a year. They are designed and built to have conducting paths through the plane to take the lightning strike and conduct the currents.
Gamma Rays! A flash of lightning.
The place where lightning occurs most often is above the Catatumbo river, which feeds Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, where the so-called Catatumbo lightning flashes several times per minute, with lightning happening up to 300 nights a year.
Risk Factors for Lightning Strikes
A UQ mathematician, Professor Peter Adams, calculated that Australians have a 1 in 12,000 chance of being struck by lightning, which is more than 650 times the chance of winning the Lotto, which is one in eight million.
In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun).
The lightning strike may cause maximum enhancements of a normal human being. The lightning can be used to activate or deactivate inherent abilities. The lightning may also remove or prevent the abilities of a person.
That's enough to run a 100 watt lightbulb for 18 months. There are between five and ten deaths from lightning strikes in Australia each year, and over 100 injuries. About 80 of these injuries result from the use of landline telephones during thunderstorms.
It is safe to touch people who have been struck by lightning; they DO NOT carry an electrical charge.
The northern half of Australia is thus very favourable for thunderstorms in the warmer months October through March (see Figure 3), and especially in the far north, thunderstorms are frequent and often associated with heavy rainfall and intense lightning.
The odds of getting struck by lightning in any given year are about 1 in 300,000. And although roughly 90% of those struck survive, the electrical discharge scars some of them with a tattoo-like mark, known as the Lichtenberg figure.
The most strokes in a lightning flash – 26 pulses in a single flash, in a cloud-to-ground flash in New Mexico, 1962.
In the early stages of development, air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground. When the opposite charges build up enough, this insulating capacity of the air breaks down and there is a rapid discharge of electricity that we know as lightning.