There isn’t a person on earth who hasn’t wondered during a major summer storm what might happen to their body if they were to be struck by lightning while walking in the garden or running from their car. The good news is that the vast majority of lightning strikes are generally survivable, but the bad news is that they can leave permanent marks on the body.
1.Each year we have a 1 in 300,000 chance of being struck by lightning.
2. Believe it or not, 90% of people usually survive this unexpected encounter, but the tattoo-like marks left by the electrical discharge are left on their bodies forever.
3. Such a pattern of ‘tattoos’ is called a ‘Lichtenberg diagram’.
4. A larger bolt of lightning can heat the air around it up to nearly 30,000 degrees Celsius.
5.It is five times hotter than the sun.
6.An average lightning strike can deliver up to a billion volts of electricity on contact with the ground.
7.No need to say that when this amount of energy hits the human body, it can easily have fatal effects on the heart, lungs and/or nervous system.
8.Most commonly, it can cause immediate cardiac arrest and, in rarer cases, seizures, brain damage, spinal cord damage and amnesia.
9.The terrible heat, light and electricity can also damage human eyes.
10. For example: it can burn holes in the retina and cause cataracts in the eye.
11.Funnily enough, lightning strikes can also cause impotence in men and reduce libido.
12.The Lichtenberg diagram clearly shows where the lightning struck the person and where this huge amount of energy was directed in the body.
13.This mark is formed when red blood cells literally burn out of the capillaries.
14. In 2011, an American man named Winston Kemp was struck by lightning while working in his garden.
15.Ironic, but the man himself worked as an electrician.
16. “I had just gone out to rescue my pumpkins in the big storm when I saw a loud noise and a huge light.”
17 .”Then for a moment there was a break in the image…but I felt no pain.”
18. “When I went back to the house, I noticed strange marks on my arm.”
19. “When after days, the marks would not subside or disappear, I took them to a doctor. The doctor concluded that I had undoubtedly been struck by lightning while running in the garden…”
