Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is another classic episode from
Speaker 1: our erstwhile host, Christian Sagar. In recent years, reported instances
Speaker 1: of death by lightning strike here in the United States
Speaker 1: are way down. The year this episode originally aired, seventeen
Speaker 1: was a record low. About eighteen and twenty nineteen saw
Speaker 1: a couple more. But still, let's explore why this is,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff is Christian Sagar. Across the United States,
Speaker 1: lightning has killed fifteen people so far in that's according
Speaker 1: to National Weather Service data. While those deaths are tragic,
Speaker 1: that's fewer than half the thirty eight lightning deaths that
Speaker 1: the nation had in sixteen. And we're on track to
Speaker 1: have the lowest number of recorded lightning fatalities since nineteen
Speaker 1: forty because that's the earliest year for which the federal
Speaker 1: governed MINT has data. The government actually maintains a year
Speaker 1: by year breakdown of deaths from lightning and other weather
Speaker 1: threats during that period. But if you look at those
Speaker 1: historical numbers, what's most startling is the long term decrease
Speaker 1: in lightening deaths over that period. In nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: the most lethal year on record, four hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: two people were killed by lightning, and throughout the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: and average of three hundred and twenty nine point three
Speaker 1: people died each year, but in the nineteen fifties. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, the rates started dropping dramatically and steadily
Speaker 1: kept decreasing, to the point where over the two thousand tens,
Speaker 1: the average annual fatality rate is about a tenth of
Speaker 1: what it was during the nineteen forties. So why are
Speaker 1: so many fewer people being killed by lightning these days
Speaker 1: than in the past. Well, one major reason is urbanization.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty, according to the US Census Bureau, forty
Speaker 1: three point five per cent of the Name Sations population
Speaker 1: lived in rural areas. By two thousand and ten, that
Speaker 1: number was down to nineteen point three percent, with more
Speaker 1: than eighty percent of the population living in cities. And today,
Speaker 1: according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average Americans
Speaker 1: spends nine of their time indoors, which generally is the
Speaker 1: safest place to be during a lightning storm. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you can't be injured or killed by
Speaker 1: lightning inside a house, and seven decades ago, not only
Speaker 1: where there are more people in rural areas, but they
Speaker 1: also spent more of their time working outdoors, where they
Speaker 1: were more vulnerable to lightning, as Ronald Holla, and meteorologist
Speaker 1: who studies lightning deaths, explained in the Atlantic and farmers
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties still used teams of horses to
Speaker 1: pull their plows, and it took them all day to
Speaker 1: finish tilling a twenty acre field. Modern farmers, in contrast,
Speaker 1: are more likely to be sitting inside a fully enclosed
Speaker 1: tractor with a metal housing that offers lightning protection. When
Speaker 1: people are killed by lightning these days, it often happens
Speaker 1: when they're enjoying some outdoor leisure activity. That's according to
Speaker 1: a seventeen analysis of lightning deaths over the past decade
Speaker 1: by John S. Jen Sennius Jr. He's a lightning safety
Speaker 1: specialist with National Weather Service. Gen Sennius found that of
Speaker 1: the three hundred and fifty two deaths over the past decade,
Speaker 1: thirty three people died while fishing, while twenty were on
Speaker 1: the beach, eighteen were camping, in sixteen were boating. When
Speaker 1: it came to sports, soccer players accounted for twelve deaths,
Speaker 1: while golfers accounted for nine, a piece of information that
Speaker 1: shows a golf course isn't necessarily the most dangerous place
Speaker 1: during a storm. Farming and ranching, in contrast, accounted for
Speaker 1: just evan teen of the recent lightning depths. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Patrick J. Tiger and produced by Tristan
Speaker 1: McNeil and Tyler Clang. For more on listen lots of
Speaker 1: other curious topics, visit how stuffworks dot com. Brain Stuff
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