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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stop to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Julie Douglas. And

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Speaker 1: in our last episode that we recorded, we talked about

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Speaker 1: watch stoppers, this idea that some people can magically stop

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Speaker 1: watches just by wearing them, that they can walk under

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Speaker 1: a street lamp and they'll set it off with their

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Speaker 1: electromagnetic field. Well, in this episode, we're exploring a similar misnomer,

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Speaker 1: this idea that some unique individuals are natural lightning rods.

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Speaker 1: Although I'm going to guess there are probably less people

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Speaker 1: who think they are human lightning rods than watch stoppers. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because it's one of those things like strike me once

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Speaker 1: with lightning, shame on you strike me seven times. Well,

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Speaker 1: maybe maybe there's something weird going on with me. It's true,

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Speaker 1: and we'll get into that. There's a idea that you

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Speaker 1: know that has been kicked around, like could it be genetic?

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Speaker 1: Could could lightning strikes be attracted a certain people. I'm

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Speaker 1: guessing you guys know the answer to that, But we'll

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Speaker 1: discuss it in a bit more. Um, But let's talk

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Speaker 1: about the anatomy of a bolt of lightning because this

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Speaker 1: is really, in and of itself a very cool thing. Yes,

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Speaker 1: lightning is very cool. Has anyone who's ever seen it

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Speaker 1: can can certainly test ouh and uh and I would

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Speaker 1: also want to call back to our episode from Stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your kid's mind when we talked about lightning.

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Speaker 1: But essentially, you have this, uh, this generated electrical charge

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Speaker 1: and it needs to get to the earth. It does,

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Speaker 1: and think think about what's going on weatherwise. You have

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Speaker 1: down drafts and up drafts and they're all colliding and

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Speaker 1: uh dogs everything. Now you're just putting yoga in it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They're colliding with unstable air and these particles collide and

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Speaker 1: you know it might be particles of ice or rain,

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Speaker 1: and they cause electrical charges to separate. So if you're

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Speaker 1: thinking about this in terms of the cloud, um, if

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Speaker 1: you've got the cloud in mind, think about this positive

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Speaker 1: charges shooting high and then the negative charges hanging low

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Speaker 1: within the cloud, and then the electrical imbalance kind of

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Speaker 1: hangs in the air and intensiflies within the cloud and

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Speaker 1: then between the cloud and the ground. So most of

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Speaker 1: the lightning that you see is cloud. The clouds just

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Speaker 1: kind of playing with each other. But then sometimes it

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Speaker 1: makes that jump to the ground again because this is

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Speaker 1: this this upper portion of the storm cloud being that

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Speaker 1: this is positive in the lower portion is negative. Now,

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Speaker 1: the exact mechanics of this are are sort of poorly understood.

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Speaker 1: That we do know that much, and we know that

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Speaker 1: um as that charge increases, the field becomes more and

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Speaker 1: more intense, so intense. This is really interesting that the

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Speaker 1: electrons at the Earth's surface are repelled deeper into the

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Speaker 1: Earth by the strong negative charge at the lower portion

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Speaker 1: of the cloud. So that's when you get to this

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Speaker 1: cloud to ground lightning because you've got the repletion of

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Speaker 1: electrons causing their surface to acquire a strong positive charge.

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Speaker 1: This is quite a dance going on here in the atmosphere, uh.

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Speaker 1: And this is when you see the cloud to the

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Speaker 1: ground electricity happen in that strong electrical charge really serving

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Speaker 1: as a conductive path and serving and then in the

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Speaker 1: air serving as an insulator. Right now, when when lightning

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Speaker 1: is traveling to the Earth, it's it's it tends to

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Speaker 1: be very sensible about things. It tends to be very economic,

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Speaker 1: and we can see that reflected in our basic understanding

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Speaker 1: of what not to do during a lightning storm. Like,

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Speaker 1: what do they tell you not to do? Don't stand

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Speaker 1: under a tall tree why because the tall tree is

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Speaker 1: more likely to be hit by lightning. Don't play golf

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Speaker 1: during a lightning storm. In other words, don't stand up

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Speaker 1: in a in a in a wide open area while

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Speaker 1: raising a piece of metal over your head because you're

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Speaker 1: susceptible to lightning strike. Right. Why because this flash of

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Speaker 1: light it heats the air around it to nearly fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand degrees fahrenheit about twenty almost twenty eight thousand degrees celsius,

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Speaker 1: and that is hotter than surface of the sun, and

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Speaker 1: the scorching heat really forces the air to expand in

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Speaker 1: an explosion of thunder. That is why you don't want

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Speaker 1: to wave around a golf club. So yeah, as you

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Speaker 1: said that, as a charge near the ground, something like

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Speaker 1: a tall tree will send positive charges surging up it.

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Speaker 1: And that's why it connects so well with something really

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Speaker 1: tall like a tree or house, a telephone poll and

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Speaker 1: then of course people, right, this is where it all

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Speaker 1: comes down to. You frequently struck by lightning, but with

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Speaker 1: with humans, Yes, humans do get struck by lightning, and

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Speaker 1: in many cases, uh, there's not a lot of opportunity

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Speaker 1: to test the theory that this individual is more susceptible

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Speaker 1: to lightning, because one good boat can and will kill

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Speaker 1: you in many cases. Yeah, although a lot of people

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Speaker 1: do survive it, but one one will do its um.

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Speaker 1: In case you're wondering what's going on in the United States,

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Speaker 1: in terms of statistics, lightning researchers estimate that twenty two

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Speaker 1: million lightning flashes strike the ground each year, and of

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Speaker 1: course the majority of that is in Florida, which is

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Speaker 1: at Central Florida has been called a lightning alley and

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Speaker 1: they have on average twelve flashes of lightning pursh square

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Speaker 1: kilometer the year. This is a lot. And so why

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Speaker 1: is the most common month to get struck between the

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Speaker 1: hours of noon to six pm? So what's going on here?

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Speaker 1: Is Florida just cursed by God? Well that's one interpretation. No, Now,

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Speaker 1: it's all about weather, right, They have tons of it,

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Speaker 1: and they have tons of moisture and warmth and there

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Speaker 1: you know, we've got the ocean there and lo and

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Speaker 1: behold you have sort of the perfect storm, as you

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Speaker 1: would say, and you have a lot of people out golfing, voting, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: So you have a lot of lightning, a lot of

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Speaker 1: people putting themselves in a position to be hit high lightning.

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Speaker 1: Put those two together, it's natural what's going to occur.

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Speaker 1: And now, so obviously we've talked about the tall objects.

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Speaker 1: We've talked about power lines, reckon. We haven't talked about

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Speaker 1: power lines, but power lines metal, All of these things

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Speaker 1: you would want to stay away from. Um, most people

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Speaker 1: think that includes cars, but that is in fact the opposite.

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Speaker 1: A car can actually protect you. And I wanted to

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Speaker 1: mention this just because we're kind of going through and

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Speaker 1: debunking a couple of things. Um, Yes, cars metal, but

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Speaker 1: what it does is it acts as a sort of

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Speaker 1: Faraday cage for you. And when I talked about a

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Speaker 1: fair Day cage, I'm talking about something that is conducting

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Speaker 1: the electrons over the surface but keeping the inside neutral.

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Speaker 1: So that's what a car is basically doing. It has

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Speaker 1: nothing to do with rubber tires or you wearing rubber soles. Um.

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Speaker 1: It's just basically crux. Yes, it's just basically that you

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Speaker 1: are protected because of these electrons moving along the surface

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Speaker 1: of the car and not on you. And it's also

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Speaker 1: worth pointing out when we talk about human lightning rods.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the lightning rod in essence is a is

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Speaker 1: a rod that is erected on, say a building, with

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Speaker 1: the understanding that, hey, we have a tall building in

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Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, lightning is going to strike it.

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Speaker 1: So I'm going to have this, uh, this rod here

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Speaker 1: in place so that the lightning will strike this rod,

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Speaker 1: and that's grounded in such a way that it doesn't

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Speaker 1: impact the rest of the building. Right, And that's really

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Speaker 1: important when I when I talk about Faraday or um,

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Speaker 1: the Faraday cage or the car, you're talking about the

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Speaker 1: path of it going into the ground and away from it.

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Speaker 1: So the car, obviously the path of lightning electricity is

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Speaker 1: running along the wall, water or down the tires and

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Speaker 1: into the ground. Yeah, bolt of lightning sensible, dude. It

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Speaker 1: wants to get where it's going if you if you

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Speaker 1: offer an alternate route that's a little more sensible, it

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Speaker 1: will take that instead. So what have we learn so

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Speaker 1: far right here in terms of being at the wrong

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Speaker 1: place at the wrong time, trying not to visit Florida

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Speaker 1: in the month of July and then decide to picnic

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Speaker 1: on a golf course under a cypress tree while entertaining

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Speaker 1: your picnic guests by twirling a baton. Let's say, no

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Speaker 1: golfing on a boat in there in the middle of

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Speaker 1: a storm either, that's always a no note. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: and try to stay away from a phone booth too,

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Speaker 1: because we're talking about lightning hitting the ground and traveling

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Speaker 1: you that telephone booth and up the wires, and if

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Speaker 1: you're happy to be in there holding the telephone, that

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Speaker 1: is not a good situation. Yeah, definitely worth thinking about.

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Speaker 1: The more and more that we end up of burying

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Speaker 1: our power lines and whatnot. It's easy to maybe see

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Speaker 1: that booth and think, oh, well that's a place of safety,

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Speaker 1: but not so another thing for for mighty Thor's sake,

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Speaker 1: try not to be of the male persuasion. Yeah, now

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Speaker 1: this is uh, this is pretty interesting as well, and

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Speaker 1: I believe it's making the rounds very recently. Uh. The

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Speaker 1: idea here is that of individuals hit by lightning our ment.

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Speaker 1: So then that's a pretty high percentage when you know,

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Speaker 1: essentially we're talking I mean, we're talking about half of

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Speaker 1: the the species. If we were all getting hit equally,

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Speaker 1: to be about fifty, but I don't know, it's eighty.

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Speaker 1: So what are we to make of that the lightning

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Speaker 1: hates men? Lightning hates men? Well, yeah, so you could say,

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Speaker 1: all right, well this is the act of of of

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Speaker 1: wrathful God and knows that that the men are worse

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Speaker 1: and therefore are deserving of more lightning. Uh. There are

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Speaker 1: some other crazier theories. The one you ran across was

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Speaker 1: a head to do with the proteins. Uh, no, minerals

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Speaker 1: something I did not go into much iron too much,

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Speaker 1: but it was something like the accumulation of minerals would

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Speaker 1: make men more conductive. I abandoned this article, by the way,

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Speaker 1: But yeah, there are a lot of different ideas. You know.

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Speaker 1: Some people will say, oh, we'll men tend to be taller,

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Speaker 1: so maybe they're more likely to be hit by lightning.

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Speaker 1: But well, actually there's some information out there that says

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Speaker 1: try to make yourself as small as possible if you

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Speaker 1: are out in a thunderstorm and you are the tallest

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Speaker 1: thing out there. I thought that was more like you

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Speaker 1: want to be submissive to an angry guy, so you

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Speaker 1: just sort of a little bit because if you're proud

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Speaker 1: and like you know, you're doing like chest out, you're

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Speaker 1: just asking for the word is going to take you on.

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Speaker 1: But no, I mean if you have an umbrella above

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Speaker 1: your head, which is an entirely different can of worms

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Speaker 1: there with an umbrella, but really anything that makes yourself taller.

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Speaker 1: There's this idea to you that men participate more in

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Speaker 1: outdoor sports like fishing and golfing, and therefore there increasing

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Speaker 1: their exposure times to storms. And then there's an idea

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Speaker 1: that men are taking more risks in these sorts of situations.

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Speaker 1: They're out there hunting down the food while the woman

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Speaker 1: is back cooking it in the kitchen. Well maybe if

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Speaker 1: you're in the mafia. Yeah, no, I don't know what

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Speaker 1: I mean. I see that. I see that there's a

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Speaker 1: logic here that you know, men are going to get

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Speaker 1: struck more than women because you know, let's say that

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Speaker 1: you work on power lines. Um, you know, most likely

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Speaker 1: with the data we have available, you're probably a man. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And then also you get into the I two that

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Speaker 1: you know, again the men are more more of a

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Speaker 1: risk taker but also a little stupider, and that they

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Speaker 1: don't want to be seen as a whim. So it's like, well,

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Speaker 1: I guess it's there's a lightning storm moving in. Maybe

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Speaker 1: we should go home. And stop playing golf. Do you

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Speaker 1: want to be that guy? You want to be the

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Speaker 1: guy who says, ah, well heck with that, that's not

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Speaker 1: God's not going to stop this golf game, and then

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Speaker 1: you keep going. So the idea too, is that men

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Speaker 1: are more likely to be that fool hardy regarding their

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Speaker 1: their risk of likning strike. Well. I think a good

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Speaker 1: example of work related injuries and just a good example

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Speaker 1: of someone being struck repeatedly and actually thinking that thor

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Speaker 1: might be after him is a guy by the name

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Speaker 1: of Roy Cleveland Sullivan, and I think we've actually mentioned

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Speaker 1: him before. He was a force ranger at the Shenandoah

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Speaker 1: National Park in Virginia, and he was struck seven times,

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Speaker 1: once while in the lookout tower, in once while driving

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Speaker 1: while walking across his front yard. This was in nineteen seventy.

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Speaker 1: Like that one was just you know, it's different if

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Speaker 1: you're the top of the tower, but dude was just

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Speaker 1: like getting his mail or something exactly, standing in a

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Speaker 1: ranger station on patrol in the park, check at camp ground,

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Speaker 1: and then fishing. So after the fourth one, he has

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Speaker 1: to have said that to have gotten very paranoid and

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Speaker 1: begin to think that some force was after him, and

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Speaker 1: I cannot blame him. Yeah, because again, we tend to see, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, we tend to apply meaning to patterns, and

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Speaker 1: the crazier the pattern than well, the crazier at the meaning,

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Speaker 1: we end up coming up with Ford. And you know,

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Speaker 1: once you're own lightning hit five or six, I can

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Speaker 1: certainly understand it. Also, there's a there's a biological toll

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Speaker 1: to be taken here, So I mean it can. Lightning

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Speaker 1: strikes can cause a host of of physical ailments, and

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Speaker 1: some of them are neurological in nature. Yeah. Actually, let's

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Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we get back, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit more about that. All right,

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Speaker 1: we're back, and we're gonna talk about a little something

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Speaker 1: cooled coronopathy. And this is a pathology of lightning, and

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Speaker 1: a handful of specialists actually study the effects of lightning

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Speaker 1: on living things. Again, there's probably not a lot of

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Speaker 1: subjects that these specialists can look at, because thankfully, lightning

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Speaker 1: strikes are fairly rare. Yeah, like, I don't I don't

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Speaker 1: know that we have a there's a coronapathy clinic in

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Speaker 1: my neighborhood. No, no, no, Well, you know, if you

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Speaker 1: live in a super fancy neighborhood. Maybe that's when you

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Speaker 1: get your own or right, maybe in Florida it's more

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Speaker 1: more likely. But you know, I was looking at the

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Speaker 1: map of showing where lightning strikes are are likely to occur,

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Speaker 1: and George's actually it was in the black on the

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Speaker 1: on the map. Blogger and science journalist Kyle Hill says

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Speaker 1: that people being bags of electrolytes, are better transmitters of

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Speaker 1: electrical current than most ground is, and many are injured

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Speaker 1: by ground current. Each year's lightning surges up one leg

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Speaker 1: that is closer to the strike, and then down the

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Speaker 1: one that's further away. Yeah, and that's just something to

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Speaker 1: keep in mind because again we're talking about lightning striking

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Speaker 1: people and the reason it does what it does, and

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Speaker 1: the sort of effects that we have afterward. Dr Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: Glurbier of the Electricity de France, so please don't write

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Speaker 1: in I know it's an awful pronunciation in France, says

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Speaker 1: that lightning survivors experience residual effects, most commonly affecting the

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Speaker 1: brain and the neuropsychiatric, vision and hearing sections, and that

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Speaker 1: these effects can actually develop slowly and become apparent only

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Speaker 1: much later. Yeah, and plus you're throwing and stuff like

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Speaker 1: just you know, post traumatic stress syndrome as well. I mean,

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Speaker 1: just the the the experience of being struck by lightning

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Speaker 1: is is pretty intense. Well, it is forever changing, and

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Speaker 1: it's not something that we think about all the time

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Speaker 1: because again it's rare. But you tend to think of

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Speaker 1: people being struck by lightning and having these incredible abilities afterward,

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Speaker 1: because we have a couple examples of this. Oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: we've we've talked about before. The individual who's suddenly had

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Speaker 1: a profound interest in piano music, right and and and

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Speaker 1: someone who had never played the piano before became a

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Speaker 1: composer and actually a wonderful pianist. M He was actually

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Speaker 1: in a phone booth when he was struck by lightning,

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Speaker 1: by the way, But really the most common symptoms that

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Speaker 1: happen physically, you will suffer some burns, but not a

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Speaker 1: lot um. You can get burned through the sweat that's

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Speaker 1: vaporized by the lightning um. Mentally, the person may suffer

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Speaker 1: from short term memory loss, have difficult difficulty mentally storing

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Speaker 1: new information and accessing old information, get tired very easily

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Speaker 1: because their mental processes are being taxed. Um, they're not

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Speaker 1: really used to sort of running at the same speed

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Speaker 1: that they were before. The personality can change, become very irritable,

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Speaker 1: and they often suffer irreparable nerve damage. Um. And this

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Speaker 1: is something that again it's not we don't think of

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Speaker 1: with lightning strikes, but this is stuff that will affect

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Speaker 1: them in various ways depending on how they were struck,

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Speaker 1: and they often have chronic headaches, some of which are

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Speaker 1: really debilitating and SUPERINTENSEE. We're looking at some photos of

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Speaker 1: what we call Lichtenberg figures, and you see these, uh

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Speaker 1: you see these on for instance, cattle sometimes that have

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Speaker 1: been struck by lightning into in this one particular instance,

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Speaker 1: on a human being who had been struck, and it's

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Speaker 1: this crazy kind of like tree like pattern, like if

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Speaker 1: you didn't know any better, you'd look at it and

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Speaker 1: I think it was some sort of a body art

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Speaker 1: like like, yeah, I was gonna say it looks tribal

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Speaker 1: kind of a thing, yeah, because that's sort of like

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Speaker 1: a tree branching out and there is a beauty to it.

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Speaker 1: But I think that one of the things that the

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Speaker 1: lictomrid figures, as it shows you it is evidence of

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Speaker 1: how life altering being struck by lightning would be, or

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Speaker 1: having that sort of current run through your body. That's

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Speaker 1: the sort of imprint that it can make. Sometimes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's like you are you are marked by it, very

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Speaker 1: deep and profound sense. And of course you have individuals

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Speaker 1: who claim, and this is even less likely, but you

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Speaker 1: have individuals who claim that they have a genetic susceptibility

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Speaker 1: to lightning strikes, that it runs in the family. For

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Speaker 1: there was recently um an episode of on Being an

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Speaker 1: interview with the author Kevin Kling, and uh Kling argued

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Speaker 1: that or not they didn't really seriously argue, but he

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Speaker 1: he claimed that there that lightning strikes run in his family. Again,

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Speaker 1: all the factors that go into it. We you can

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Speaker 1: ask questions like, well, does your family tend to live

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Speaker 1: in Florida? Does your family tend to climb things a lot?

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Speaker 1: Are you a very outdoorsy family? Are you fisherman? You know,

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Speaker 1: there are all these other factors that go into it.

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Speaker 1: That really has nothing to do with a cursed family

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Speaker 1: lineage or something in your genes that makes you especially

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Speaker 1: susceptible to a lightning strike. But you know, always thinking

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Speaker 1: about the ancestral Memories episode. Then we talked about sometimes

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Speaker 1: that you take on your family's history and you repeat it,

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Speaker 1: and if this becomes part of your family's mythology, then

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Speaker 1: you begin to especially if if you have an uncle

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Speaker 1: or and or someone in the family that is marked

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Speaker 1: like this, with this Lichtenburg figure, you can easily see

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Speaker 1: how someone might begin to think this is, you know,

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Speaker 1: something that is a curse on their family and not

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Speaker 1: necessarily looking at it like, well, you know, we we

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Speaker 1: work out in the outdoors quite a bit, and we

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Speaker 1: live in Florida, or you know, various other factors that

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Speaker 1: would make the likelihood even greater for this family to

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Speaker 1: be struck. Yeah, there's a great character in Corte McCarthy's

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Speaker 1: All the Pretty Horses, a character in Blevins, and I

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Speaker 1: think this is reflected in the film version as well.

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Speaker 1: But um he he claims to have this history of

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Speaker 1: lightning strikes, and there's this this great bit where he's

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Speaker 1: explaining it. He says, it runs in my family. My

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Speaker 1: granddaddy was killed in a mind bucket in West Virginia.

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Speaker 1: It run down in the whole hundred and eighty feet

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Speaker 1: to get him. Couldn't even wait for him to get

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Speaker 1: up to the top. They had to wet down the

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Speaker 1: bucket to cool it for they could get him out

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Speaker 1: of it. Him and two other men. It fried him

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Speaker 1: like bacon. My daddy's older brother was blowed out of

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Speaker 1: a derek in the Baston field in the year nineteen

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Speaker 1: and four, cable rig with a wood derek. But the

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Speaker 1: lightning got him anyways, and him not nineteen years old.

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Speaker 1: Great uncle on my mother's side, mother's side, I said,

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Speaker 1: got killed on a horse and it never singed a

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Speaker 1: hair on that horse, and it killed him graveyard dead.

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Speaker 1: They had to cut cut his belt off of him

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Speaker 1: where it welded the buckle shut. And I got a

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Speaker 1: cousin ain't but four years older than me, and was

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Speaker 1: struck down in his own yard coming from the barn,

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Speaker 1: and it paralyzed him all down one side and melted

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Speaker 1: the fillings in his teeth and soldered his jaws shut.

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Speaker 1: So as persuasive persuasive? Um, alright, so you think that's persuasive,

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Speaker 1: But then all you have to do, as we ever

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Speaker 1: have to do when we try to get outside of ourselves,

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Speaker 1: is to look to space, of course, because there's something

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Speaker 1: about space and lightning going on that explored to look

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Speaker 1: like weak sauce. Okay, scientists have actually observed lightning on

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Speaker 1: Mars and Saturn before. Right, we know this, um, But

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Speaker 1: what is nuts is that it can occur in the

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Speaker 1: middle of space and it has done so to a

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Speaker 1: force equaling a trillion lightning bolts. Okay, we're talking about

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Speaker 1: electrical surge, trillion lightning bolts. This current was discovered near

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Speaker 1: Galaxy three C three zero three, and it's thought to

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Speaker 1: be the byproduct of a nearby massive black hole that

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Speaker 1: is emitting huge amounts of magnetic energy. Two. It's the

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Speaker 1: biggest burst of electric current ever detected in the universe.

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Speaker 1: That is just crazy because you have not only do

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Speaker 1: you have a black hole in this scenario, you have

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Speaker 1: the most enormous lightning bolt ever imagined occurring as well.

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Speaker 1: I mean just amazing. Like, I mean, what can you

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Speaker 1: even say about that? That's drama. Yeah, that is that

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Speaker 1: is some drama. All right, Well there you go. All right, well, um,

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Speaker 1: what's called the about over and do some quick listener mail?

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Speaker 1: All right, this is this one comes from a slightly

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Speaker 1: older episode, but listener of Brenton Wrightson and says, get

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Speaker 1: a Robert and Julie. Perhaps that means this is an

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Speaker 1: Australian listener. We shall find out. I love your podcast

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Speaker 1: I'm slowly working my way through them, and to have

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Speaker 1: just listened to the Firewalking podcast you Your mentioned of

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Speaker 1: your sister putting your tongue on the car cigarette ladder

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Speaker 1: made me smile, as did a similar thing when I

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Speaker 1: was a kid. Just use my finger and