Speaker 1: There are three hundred billion strikes of lightning in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere of planet Earth each year, equaling one hundred strikes
Speaker 1: of lightning per second. And I've been long fascinated by
Speaker 1: the display of power of natural systems, giant waves, raging rivers,
Speaker 1: violent storms, but there is one that is the definition
Speaker 1: of flashy. When it comes to natural stuff that happens,
Speaker 1: the visual and auditory display of lightning's unhaltered power is unmatched.
Speaker 1: It's mysterious, far beyond the control of man, yet almost
Speaker 1: fully understood by science, predictable to a degree, inflicting instantaneous
Speaker 1: and oddly specific justice on whatever it strikes. All the
Speaker 1: while it's motivation, meaning why it strikes and where it does,
Speaker 1: is completely untrackable. Therein lies man's timeless fascination and fear
Speaker 1: of lightning. We're going to hear two stories of people
Speaker 1: struck by lightning, a hunter and a farmer, and it
Speaker 1: will literally put the fear of God in you did meet,
Speaker 1: and we're going to have a true nerd out talk
Speaker 1: about lightning with a true weather man. I really doubt
Speaker 1: that you're going to want to miss this one. My
Speaker 1: name is Klay Nukelem, and this is the Bear Grease podcast,
Speaker 1: where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight
Speaker 1: and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of
Speaker 1: Americans who live their lives close to the land, presented
Speaker 1: by FHF gear, American made us built hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place.
Speaker 1: As we explore. On the morning of the third day,
Speaker 1: there was thunder and lightning. A cloud covered the mountain.
Speaker 1: All the people among the tents shook with fear. Mount
Speaker 1: Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord came down
Speaker 1: upon it in fire. Its smoke went up like the
Speaker 1: smoke of a stove, and the whole mountain shook. Moses spoke,
Speaker 1: and God answered him with thunder. Then the Lord came down.
Speaker 1: That was an excerpt from the Book of Exodus. Only
Speaker 1: in modern times, say the last three hundred years, has
Speaker 1: a crack of lightning been simply and wholly viewed as
Speaker 1: a science equation, the sum of a predictable sequence of
Speaker 1: positive and negative charges in the clouds arcing to the
Speaker 1: ground in a crack of thunder and lightning, fueled by
Speaker 1: a billion jewels of energy. But is it just that
Speaker 1: because it actually is just that it's science. But is
Speaker 1: it more? Was it more back when humans were primitive
Speaker 1: thinkers and were led around the nose by some irrational tomfoolery,
Speaker 1: or could still today? A flash of lightning be a
Speaker 1: window to something deeper, like a pop up advertisement on
Speaker 1: Facebook connecting the rational world to that sovereign, invisible, mysterious
Speaker 1: power source whose life pulsates on planet Earth that no
Speaker 1: equation can understand. I guess it matters how you choose
Speaker 1: to look at this thing. But don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I'm here for the science, but my experience on this
Speaker 1: planet has told me there's more. Like To introduce you
Speaker 1: to a bear hunter.
Speaker 2: My name is John Donovan, and back in September I
Speaker 2: was hit by lightning by wall bear hunting. Little backstory
Speaker 2: about the piece of property. I've been hunting it for
Speaker 2: about four years now and pretty much been after this
Speaker 2: bear for the three straight seasons and all off season.
Speaker 2: I was prepping the area, getting it ready, and then
Speaker 2: come opening day, no luck getting the bear. And then
Speaker 2: it was September eighteenth. I got out of work and
Speaker 2: got into the stand. I was right around one point
Speaker 2: thirty two o'clock in the afternoon and there was a
Speaker 2: weather cell pretty much in South Fayetteville, right over Greenland,
Speaker 2: and I was paying attention to it, and I kind
Speaker 2: of just felt an eerie feeling and there was a
Speaker 2: wind shift out of nowhere. And I was actually texting
Speaker 2: a buddy at the time, thinking, hey, can you check
Speaker 2: the way a little bit more for me? And you know,
Speaker 2: maybe it was it felt like ten minutes, but it
Speaker 2: was probably only two minutes. I feel the wind shift again,
Speaker 2: and I just had this eerie feeling, and I said
Speaker 2: to myself, like, I think I should get down stand,
Speaker 2: and probably fifty sixty yards behind me is this bluff.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, let me just ride out the storm.
Speaker 2: I could tell it was probably gonna be a twenty
Speaker 2: to thirty minute storm.
Speaker 3: I'll get back up the.
Speaker 2: Stand and hopefully the bear comes in.
Speaker 3: So I this one stand my whole life.
Speaker 2: I always wear a safety harness because my dad actually
Speaker 2: fell thirty one feet out of a tree when I
Speaker 2: was a kid, and really, you know, it was a
Speaker 2: very scary time. He survived, thankfully, and so he harped
Speaker 2: all childhood that always have a safety harness, and we
Speaker 2: usually use the lifeline I think they're called, but this
Speaker 2: one stand. I didn't have it, and I have to
Speaker 2: get about ten to twelve feet up and then clip in.
Speaker 1: We all know that eerie feeling of an approaching storm,
Speaker 1: like John felt. It's an ancient one that's helped our
Speaker 1: species survive. We also know the feeling of being in
Speaker 1: cell range able to text, but not having good enough
Speaker 1: service to get the radar on your weather app to
Speaker 1: pull up. I was sitting in a tree that same day,
Speaker 1: September eighteenth, twenty twenty five, about forty miles away from
Speaker 1: John in Arkansas. He and I both heard rolling thunder
Speaker 1: in the distance. A slight wind began to blow, the
Speaker 1: sky darkened, and it felt like the sun was gonna set,
Speaker 1: even though it was only mid afternoon. And when those
Speaker 1: first drops of rain start to hit you, you get
Speaker 1: the sense I've got to get out of here. Because
Speaker 1: there's no square inch of planet Earth that's exempt from
Speaker 1: potentially being struck. And thirty seven million lightning bolts strike
Speaker 1: the United States each year. Rain, wind, and hail all
Speaker 1: cover these large areas. Think about this like macro picture
Speaker 1: of the places they cover. But it's the specificity of
Speaker 1: lightning that makes it so unnerving. We've all been in
Speaker 1: a thunderstorm, But how it picks out what and when
Speaker 1: to strike is what makes it so unnerving. Two people
Speaker 1: could be in a field and one struck and the
Speaker 1: other left completely fine. But as it turns out, one
Speaker 1: in six hundred thousand Americans will be struck by lightning.
Speaker 1: You heard me right, from the stats that I have
Speaker 1: found one in six hundred thousand, and that really seems
Speaker 1: high to me. But if you think about it, I
Speaker 1: bet you know someone or at least know of someone
Speaker 1: who's been struck. But that statistic doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: you personally have a one in six hundred thousand chance
Speaker 1: of being struck, because people who spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time outside have vastly higher odds of being struck than
Speaker 1: someone who rarely goes out, and other factors play in
Speaker 1: as well. As a matter of fact, if you're a man,
Speaker 1: you have a four times more likely chance than a
Speaker 1: woman to be struck by lightning, So the actual odds
Speaker 1: are closer to one in a million that you'll be struck,
Speaker 1: So you can rest easy. But John Donovan was one
Speaker 1: of them. This storm that came up on him was
Speaker 1: an isolated pop up shower and he thought it might
Speaker 1: miss him, so he hung out in the tree and
Speaker 1: he was after this big bear. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: get down. He's fourteen feet up this metal tree stand.
Speaker 1: As the front edge of the storm reaches him and
Speaker 1: it starts to rain. He hears a clap of thunder
Speaker 1: close and he knows that it's time to go.
Speaker 2: So I get situated. I get about one to two
Speaker 2: steps down, and then that's when I take the clip off,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, one more step down
Speaker 2: and that's pretty much the last thing I remember until
Speaker 2: I woke up. Just heard a loud noise and I
Speaker 2: was out, and then don't really know exactly how long
Speaker 2: I was out or not out for, and then I
Speaker 2: just remember kind of waking up. And the only way
Speaker 2: I can describe it is if you've ever seen like
Speaker 2: a war movie where someone gets hit by a frag.
Speaker 2: I was everything was a slow motion. I'm looking all
Speaker 2: around and I just couldn't breathe couldn't, like, got the
Speaker 2: wind knocked out of me. And then I'm just looking
Speaker 2: all around and I just see stars and I just
Speaker 2: had no idea what happened. And smelt like a weird smell,
Speaker 2: but still didn't hit me on what actually happened. I
Speaker 2: thought I slipped, and I've long hair, of course, so
Speaker 2: my hat was all messed up and my hair was
Speaker 2: all on my face and I lift my hand up
Speaker 2: and something felt like it stabbed me in the forehead.
Speaker 2: And that's when I was reaching for my phone, and
Speaker 2: my phone was fried, but I was able to use
Speaker 2: like the glare of the black screen, and I just
Speaker 2: saw a welt, probably the size of a baseball. And
Speaker 2: that's when I just started panicking because I knew something
Speaker 2: bad happened. And again, still didn't even realize if I slipped,
Speaker 2: if it was lightning, or what it was really, but
Speaker 2: I just knew I had to get out of the woods.
Speaker 2: Something was telling me, you have to get out now.
Speaker 2: I don't know what was gonna happen, to be honest,
Speaker 2: So I start gathering, you know, my stuff, and my
Speaker 2: bow was probably ten or so feet away from me.
Speaker 2: So then I'm starting putting the clues together. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't think I fell, because if I fell, how
Speaker 2: did I get four feet away from the tree? How
Speaker 2: did my bow get there? And that's when I started
Speaker 2: realizing I'm pretty sure I just got hit by lightning,
Speaker 2: or the tree I was in got hit by lightning.
Speaker 1: It's odd to think that you'd be struck by lightning
Speaker 1: and not know it, but it actually makes perfect sense,
Speaker 1: as the electrical charge of lightning moves at two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty million miles per hour. That's two thirds the
Speaker 1: speed of light, so it hits you before the sound
Speaker 1: of thunder because it's traveling faster than the speed of sound.
Speaker 1: So John is now laying bewildered on the ground a
Speaker 1: wound on his head from smashing against the ground, presumably,
Speaker 1: and his bow is lying several feet away. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna leave him right there for now. And I'd like
Speaker 1: to introduce you to another one in a million statistic.
Speaker 1: He's also my neighbor and friend.
Speaker 4: My name is Terrell Spencer, go by Spence. I own
Speaker 4: across the Creek Farm pastored poultry farm in West Fork, Arkansas.
Speaker 4: And I'm gonna talk about getting popped by lightning. So
Speaker 4: I was moving birds. A guy called me to talk
Speaker 4: about this decision I had, you know, and so we
Speaker 4: we talked a little bit, and I got off my
Speaker 4: tractor after talking to him and was hooking up chains
Speaker 4: and I was just like, you know what, maybe everyone
Speaker 4: else knows better than me. And I felt like like
Speaker 4: I was really supposed to do something, and I'm just like,
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna listen to everyone else are smarter than me.
Speaker 4: And I was really frustrated. And so we have these
Speaker 4: big structures are like twenty by forty. They're big, kind
Speaker 4: of imagine a greenhouse on skids, and that's what our
Speaker 4: hens are in. And I've got these two twenty foot
Speaker 4: logging chains. I hook up onto that structure, one on
Speaker 4: each side, and then I hook it up to my
Speaker 4: tractor and I pull it. So we got a routine.
Speaker 4: So I'm just kind of going through the motions. I
Speaker 4: hook those logging chains up, you know, and I've got
Speaker 4: like this rain slicker on, and I've got just this
Speaker 4: it might be the same pantomwhare Now they're just absolutely soaked,
Speaker 4: you know, my muck boots on, and uh, I'm feeding
Speaker 4: the birds. So on the front of the tractor. After
Speaker 4: I unhook the chains, there's buckets of feed. So I
Speaker 4: get the buckets of feed. I'm gonna put you know,
Speaker 4: three or four buckets feed in there, and I finish,
Speaker 4: and I'm carrying the buckets out. I open up the door,
Speaker 4: step out, shut the door, and I take a few steps,
Speaker 4: and I'm still kind of grumbling about this thing that
Speaker 4: I'm thinking on. I'm not even really paying attention to
Speaker 4: what I'm doing. And then all of a sudden, like
Speaker 4: out of the corner of my eye, like this pink
Speaker 4: purple color happens, and everything just kind of like when
Speaker 4: a movie fades, like you know, like in the end,
Speaker 4: like everything kind of turns a color. It was like
Speaker 4: everything started to turn that pink and and what is
Speaker 4: It was probably a split second, but it felt like
Speaker 4: a couple seconds, like I was like, wait, what's going on?
Speaker 4: And then there was an explosion and yeah, and like
Speaker 4: I'd been really close to explosions in the war, like
Speaker 4: i'd been, you know, I'd been tossing around by some
Speaker 4: rockets and that kind of stuff, and it was it
Speaker 4: was just like that, you know, like when you get
Speaker 4: hit so hard it feels like it knocks you out
Speaker 4: of yourself.
Speaker 1: Spence was in the United States Army and served in
Speaker 1: the Iraq War in the early two thousands. He saw
Speaker 1: some serious act of combat and know, not all of
Speaker 1: us know what it feels like to get knocked out
Speaker 1: of yourself. But whatever just happened to him, it was
Speaker 1: kind of like what happened in the war. It doesn't
Speaker 1: sound good, and you might ask how many people are
Speaker 1: actually getting struck by lightning. According to the CDC, from
Speaker 1: two thousand and six to twenty twenty five, there were
Speaker 1: five hundred and seventeen lightning deaths in the United States,
Speaker 1: adding up to twenty five deaths per year. In a
Speaker 1: wider look at history, lightning deaths peaked in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: when over four hundred Americans were killed in a single
Speaker 1: year nineteen forty three. During that time, the government started
Speaker 1: national marketing campaigns educating people about the danger of lightning.
Speaker 1: This helped, and lightning deaths have decreased in the last
Speaker 1: several decades since then, but clearly they aren't absent. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, as I'm writing this podcast, a
Speaker 1: fifteen year old boy was killed by lightning as he
Speaker 1: sheltered his thirteen year old younger brother for lightning on
Speaker 1: top of a Colorado mountain in late July. That's really
Speaker 1: hard to understand, and our condolences go out to that family.
Speaker 1: But the people who die are actually quite rare, because
Speaker 1: ninety percent of people that are struck by lightning live.
Speaker 1: On average, two hundred and seventy to three hundred people
Speaker 1: are struck each year, and John and Spence clearly survived.
Speaker 1: But what is lightning? I know? Just the guy to tell.
Speaker 5: Us hello, This is Joshua Weisel with Weather T two
Speaker 5: five tests us one two test us.
Speaker 3: All right, we are rolling awesome. So introduction for who
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 5: My name is Joshua Weisel and this is my company
Speaker 5: behind me.
Speaker 3: Weather T two five.
Speaker 5: I've been doing weather broadcasting since twenty fifteen and excited
Speaker 5: to be here and talk about some lightning.
Speaker 1: Josh is in his mid twenties and he's functionally a meteorologist.
Speaker 1: He doesn't work for a TV station, nor has he
Speaker 1: taken an established career route. I kind of view him
Speaker 1: like a weather outlaw, operating outside the mainstream system and
Speaker 1: absolutely obsessed with weather. He has his own streaming weather
Speaker 1: service called Weather two two five, where he is the
Speaker 1: chief weather analysis serving the four Corners area of Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas,
Speaker 1: and Arkansas. I think it's better than the Weather Channel,
Speaker 1: and I like the passion of it.
Speaker 5: So lightning is a phenomenon that obviously we have all encountered,
Speaker 5: you know, for whatever reason in this part of the country.
Speaker 5: I always laugh and tell people it's not that peaceful
Speaker 5: you know overnight thunderstorm that you can sleep to, and
Speaker 5: it's that peaceful rumble of thunder off in the distance.
Speaker 5: It always sounds like a bomb goes off. And so
Speaker 5: lightning is one of the more dangerous phenomenon with weather
Speaker 5: because it doesn't just have to be severe weather to occur.
Speaker 3: In order for lightning to occur, you.
Speaker 5: Typically need the warm and humid, unstable environment that we
Speaker 5: get here in the South, and that leads to taller storms.
Speaker 5: And it may sound weird, but you need taller storms
Speaker 5: in order for lightning to develop because aloft you get
Speaker 5: frozen iceed particles and you get water particles and they
Speaker 5: bounce around up in the updraft, and as they bounce around,
Speaker 5: they're kind of exchanging the charges and they start to conflict.
Speaker 5: So then you see the charges that they separate to
Speaker 5: the top and the bottom of the storm. And so
Speaker 5: you know, looking at how that works, negative charges go up,
Speaker 5: positive charges go down, and that's how you get lightning
Speaker 5: to start forming, is the charges. And again you need
Speaker 5: more of an unstable and humid environment, So that's why
Speaker 5: the South gets most of the lightning in terms of
Speaker 5: statistical deaths and occurrences.
Speaker 1: Lightning is the result of ice and water particles slashing
Speaker 1: around in a cloud, creating an electrical charge, kind of
Speaker 1: like a load of towels being tossed around in your
Speaker 1: dryer creating static electricity that zaps you when you touch it.
Speaker 1: The clouds are the towels, and your hand is the earth.
Speaker 1: The positive charges go up and the negative charges go
Speaker 1: down in the cloud, and then the positive charges on
Speaker 1: the Earth's surface attract those low hanging negative charges, and
Speaker 1: a bolt of lightning is born, kind of like an
Speaker 1: unheard of before anecdote being birthed and born right out
Speaker 1: of Brent Reeves's lips. And similar to his hot air,
Speaker 1: lightning heats up the air to fifty four thousand degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: making it expand so quickly it creates a shockwave, a boot,
Speaker 1: a flash of electromagnetic radiation. And as John said, the
Speaker 1: South is the lightning capital of America. But Florida is
Speaker 1: the lightning capital of all the states, with more deaths
Speaker 1: than any other place, averaging between seven and ten per year.
Speaker 1: But Texas has the most lightning strikes, with around thirteen
Speaker 1: million striking annually, But Oklahoma, Oklahoma has the highest concentration
Speaker 1: of lightning, with seventy three flashes per square mile annually.
Speaker 1: To break that down the way it makes sense to me,
Speaker 1: Florida has more people, so more people get killed. They've
Speaker 1: also got a lot of ag in flat country. Texas
Speaker 1: has the bigger geographic area, so it gets the most lightning.
Speaker 1: But it sounds to me like Oklahoma actually has the
Speaker 1: most lightning. And that's probably the reason that this song
Speaker 1: was written in Oklahoma.
Speaker 5: When we were sitting on the front porch where the
Speaker 5: weather rolling.
Speaker 3: In, laughing louder than the big South end.
Speaker 5: He ran out to rule you, and the bladder ain't
Speaker 5: falling in your hair. He's hand leg checkers from a
Speaker 5: fool in chair country music in the kitchen, and hear
Speaker 5: it singing through the screen.
Speaker 3: Withather warns in.
Speaker 1: Twin that's the Turnpike Troubadour's song a tornado warning. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt the storm they wrote about had lightning in it.
Speaker 1: But let's get back to John Donovan who wished he'd
Speaker 1: had a weather warning. But remember he doesn't know what's
Speaker 1: happened he's woken up on the ground after blacking out.
Speaker 1: He's clearly falling out of his tree stand, and his
Speaker 1: phone is fried and doesn't work.
Speaker 2: So again these are all like I'm kind of falling
Speaker 2: in and out of understanding where I was. But I
Speaker 2: knew I had to get out because no one was
Speaker 2: really going to be looking for me for probably, like
Speaker 2: I said, I think it was three or three thirty
Speaker 2: people had my location. But so I start gathering my
Speaker 2: belongings and I'm roughly I call about three quarters of
Speaker 2: a mile down this bluff, and my truck's parked up,
Speaker 2: and I just start going up this hill and every
Speaker 2: ten to twenty feet I'm falling down and I'm just
Speaker 2: taking everything out of me to even walk. And I
Speaker 2: got to the point where i would pick like a
Speaker 2: rock or a tree, and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: make it there, and I would get up and then
Speaker 2: I'd start passing out. And then about halfway up is
Speaker 2: when my whole left side started to not work. I
Speaker 2: felt my arm going limp, I was holding my bag,
Speaker 2: let go my bag, and my vision in my left
Speaker 2: side just started getting all blurry. And it was the
Speaker 2: same side where I hit my head, so that was
Speaker 2: really really scaring me. And then again the timeframe, like
Speaker 2: the minutes, the hours are still kind of fuzzy. I
Speaker 2: know it happened roughly around three I got to my truck,
Speaker 2: I want to say, around three fifty, right before four o'clock,
Speaker 2: and couldn't connect my phone. My phone still wasn't working,
Speaker 2: so I couldn't dial out or anything. So in my
Speaker 2: mind my plan was, I need to get somewhere where
Speaker 2: someone can find me. So my plan was to try
Speaker 2: to safely crash or pull off into a ditch. By
Speaker 2: seventy one and another like ten or so minutes that
Speaker 2: I don't really remember. I must have taken my boots
Speaker 2: off and my pants off, because when I ended up
Speaker 2: getting to the hospital later, I was in my gym
Speaker 2: shorts and a pair of like slides or something like
Speaker 2: cheap sneakers or something I had, and I think subconsciously
Speaker 2: I was making sure my feet were working because I
Speaker 2: knew I had to use the the gas and breaks
Speaker 2: in my truck.
Speaker 3: So I still.
Speaker 2: Don't really remember why I did that or what the
Speaker 2: reason was. But and then so I finally get in
Speaker 2: my truck, my phone's still not working, and it's trenchill
Speaker 2: downpour now, and I keep just getting like these adrenaline
Speaker 2: rushes of Okay, keep going, you can make it to
Speaker 2: the next road. You can make it to the next road.
Speaker 2: And then finally my phone connected to my truck, and
Speaker 2: I see my little wife's face out of my right
Speaker 2: eye on my recent call, so I just click it.
Speaker 1: John barely remembers this stuff, and much of it came
Speaker 1: to him days or even weeks later. It was like
Speaker 1: the lightning took his consciousness and he was fading in
Speaker 1: and out of it, trying to get back. Oddly. Terrell
Speaker 1: Spencer had a similar experience back in the chicken pasture.
Speaker 4: A lot of stuff happened, I think pretty fast. I
Speaker 4: knew I'd been hit by light and everything was white
Speaker 4: and I couldn't hear any like it was just like
Speaker 4: a reset. And when I came to, I was kind
Speaker 4: of looking over my body, and then there was like
Speaker 4: all the stuff that I believe about, like faith and
Speaker 4: meeting God and being judged. Like I can tell you
Speaker 4: I believe that more now, like cause I feel like
Speaker 4: I went through all that. You know, there's that whole
Speaker 4: side of it. But I'm looking down at my body
Speaker 4: in the rain, and there's smoke coming off of me.
Speaker 4: There's like this blue haze. I don't know if you
Speaker 4: ever like took like alcohol and put in your hand
Speaker 4: lit it, and it had that kind of like haze
Speaker 4: or hair spray, you know, when you're being just a
Speaker 4: knuckleheaded teenager or whatever. And there's just like that flame
Speaker 4: going over and it's like weird, like that was going up.
Speaker 4: It was like this blue kind of haze that with
Speaker 4: fire thing that was going up and down my body,
Speaker 4: and then there was smoke coming up, which I think
Speaker 4: it was probably just the water evaporating, and then it's
Speaker 4: kind kind of like I went back into my body
Speaker 4: and I don't know if I made that up that's
Speaker 4: what really happened, but that's that's what I experienced. And
Speaker 4: it was kind of the same like there's a couple
Speaker 4: of times in the war where stuff like that would
Speaker 4: happen and everything would slow down and you became hyper aware.
Speaker 4: I knew i'd been hit by lightning, Like I didn't
Speaker 4: see a lightning bolt or anything. I just it just
Speaker 4: kind of like went pink the explosion, and then I
Speaker 4: kind of came to and I heard, you know, hens
Speaker 4: make all kinds of your chickens make all kinds of sounds,
Speaker 4: you know, just like any farmer would know, like if
Speaker 4: you farm cattle or hogs or whatever. Like they talked
Speaker 4: to you and you can pick up on stuff. After
Speaker 4: twenty years, I've never heard chickens make the sound that
Speaker 4: they made then. It was the only way I can describe.
Speaker 4: It was like pure terror.
Speaker 1: Only a chicken farmer would get struck by lightning and
Speaker 1: described with such passion always as he heard his hen
Speaker 1: makes afterwards. But maybe that's why across the Creek Farms
Speaker 1: chicken is so good, and you too could partake in
Speaker 1: that chicken if you live in northwest Arkansas by ordering
Speaker 1: at www dot acrossthecreekfarm dot com. For real, you could
Speaker 1: order it from there. But chicken marketing is beside the
Speaker 1: point here. It's about to get real serious, like real
Speaker 1: serious back with Spence.
Speaker 4: So I came to and I like knew that I
Speaker 4: was dead and the war guys would get hit and
Speaker 4: like you have a certain amount of adrenaline something like
Speaker 4: all your insides will be messed up, but you can
Speaker 4: go for you know, five twenty thirty seconds. You like
Speaker 4: you got some time before you go. And so I was.
Speaker 4: I was in that timeframe, like I knew I was
Speaker 4: dead and I and the only thought I had was
Speaker 4: and I can hear these hens screaming and everything kind
Speaker 4: of like my senses came back. I couldn't move the
Speaker 4: right side of my body because that's where the lightning
Speaker 4: didn't hit me. Later on, like that, what we figured
Speaker 4: out is it it probably hit like six inches away
Speaker 4: or a foot away, but it hit in and it
Speaker 4: came in my right side and my muck boot it
Speaker 4: burned a hole through and then it went out my
Speaker 4: left side, and so there was a hole in my
Speaker 4: muck boot, you know, at the right below my toes
Speaker 4: where it came in, and then there was like on
Speaker 4: my left side it blew out skin and so there
Speaker 4: was like grass in my boot where it came in,
Speaker 4: and there was like a skin plug in a hole
Speaker 4: where it went out. Yeah, and I guess it missed
Speaker 4: my heart. Long story short, I lived. I don't and
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to spoiler alert, but and the only
Speaker 4: thing I could think of was, I don't know if
Speaker 4: you've ever seen like a dead animal out in the rain,
Speaker 4: Like I don't know if you kill a deer like
Speaker 4: we see, you know, if chicken gets out, something kills it,
Speaker 4: rains on just looks terrible. And for some reason, like
Speaker 4: my whole focus was I didn't want my wife or
Speaker 4: kids for that to be like how they found me,
Speaker 4: just wet and dead. So I got up and I
Speaker 4: stumbled over to the pen, and the hens are still screaming.
Speaker 4: My hearing's coming back, my vision's back. Like when I
Speaker 4: stood up, one side of my body kind of worked
Speaker 4: like it felt like when your feet go numb. The
Speaker 4: other side was just dead. And so like I kind
Speaker 4: of stumbled back into the pen. I opened up the
Speaker 4: door just because probably out of instinct, and around that door,
Speaker 4: you know, it's a twenty by forty structure, and around
Speaker 4: that door there was like an art a perfect circle
Speaker 4: of dead hens like going like ten foot back or
Speaker 4: whatever under the roosts. It's like any hen that had
Speaker 4: been in that kill zone was just dead. And then
Speaker 4: there were some like right outside of it that were
Speaker 4: like kind of like flopping around like kind of bobbing
Speaker 4: their head like they were stunned. And then they were
Speaker 4: all the ones on the roosts and on the back
Speaker 4: of the pen. They were all pile up there, just
Speaker 4: screaming their heads off. So I fell back down and
Speaker 4: I pulled out my phone, and my hands weren't my
Speaker 4: fingers weren't working, so it kind of felt like I
Speaker 4: was just clubbing my phone. It wanted to do that
Speaker 4: face id thing, you know, like and I don't know
Speaker 4: if it was like the smoke or what, but like
Speaker 4: I couldn't get it to go, So I'm like pawing
Speaker 4: out the pass code and I'm like, man, I'm on
Speaker 4: a clock here, so I'm trying, try and trying, and
Speaker 4: I finally get it to go through and it's one
Speaker 4: and it goes through to one of those dang telemarketers
Speaker 4: that's trying to sell you insurance and so like, and
Speaker 4: I can't remember if he answered or not, but I like,
Speaker 4: so I hung out and I'm like, you gotta be
Speaker 4: freaking kidding me. And so then I I'm able to
Speaker 4: hit you know, like call back Carla, my wife, and
Speaker 4: she's in a meeting, and she hits me with one
Speaker 4: of those like in a meeting, call or can't talk
Speaker 4: right now, call you back later. So then our church,
Speaker 4: the men in our church have like this group like
Speaker 4: a WhatsApp group, and I go to that one and
Speaker 4: I start doing all this text like trying to text it,
Speaker 4: and it's just absolute gibberish because my fingers don't work.
Speaker 1: From John and Spence's story, it's clear that if the
Speaker 1: lightning doesn't kill you, which in ninety percent of cases
Speaker 1: it doesn't, getting struck dysfunctionalizes you for a period of time.
Speaker 1: But now is a good time to try to understand
Speaker 1: why these guys got struck by lightning. Here's Josh from
Speaker 1: whether two two five.
Speaker 5: Now, the reason it strikes is it's looking for those charges,
Speaker 5: but it's looking for the shortest distance between the cloud
Speaker 5: base and where the item is on the surface. So
Speaker 5: that also kind of leads into, you know, the thought
Speaker 5: of tallest objects and stuff like that. Air is not
Speaker 5: a good conductor for electricity, so it looks for that
Speaker 5: shortest distance. And so when it's looking for that shortest distance,
Speaker 5: it's looking for the tallest object to strike to get
Speaker 5: to those particles on the surface that are charged. And
Speaker 5: when it does so, it typically hits the tallest things.
Speaker 5: In some cases, unfortunately for farmers in this part of
Speaker 5: the country, that may be a cow in you know,
Speaker 5: other parts of the world, that may be the tallest
Speaker 5: building or a light post or something that's just allowing
Speaker 5: for that shortest distance to make a connection. So the
Speaker 5: myth that I hear a lot too is you know,
Speaker 5: if you're wearing like a watch, or if you have
Speaker 5: a necklace, or if you're you know, carrying something metal
Speaker 5: with you, that you're automatically going to be the attraction
Speaker 5: to lightning.
Speaker 3: So it's actually kind of a wives tale.
Speaker 5: It really doesn't matter if it's more conductive or not.
Speaker 5: It really matters if you're the tallest thing out there.
Speaker 5: So if I were to go out in the parking
Speaker 5: lot and hold like a lead pipe above my head
Speaker 5: and a thunderstorm, I'm probably gonna get struck, not because
Speaker 5: of that pipe, but because I'm the tallest thing and
Speaker 5: that's the shortest distance, so it's going to hit that object.
Speaker 5: And the reason that there's a lot of people that
Speaker 5: they believe that metal is the attraction to lightning, it's
Speaker 5: because obviously we know that they hit metal structures the most.
Speaker 5: I've been text to a light pole that exploded from
Speaker 5: a lightning strike in my car, and you know that
Speaker 5: was the tallest thing out there, So it's really not
Speaker 5: you know one item. So if you have like a
Speaker 5: light pole, that's not going to be attracting the lightning
Speaker 5: more than let's say, if I were to put a
Speaker 5: wooden two by four out in the yard. So it's
Speaker 5: just it's mostly the height, and it's the connector between
Speaker 5: the shortest distance of the cloud based to the surface.
Speaker 1: Light strikes the highest thing around, not necessarily metal stuff.
Speaker 1: I would have got that wrong. On a test. Spence
Speaker 1: was in an open pasture standing beside that portable chicken
Speaker 1: hoop house which is probably seven eight ten feet tall.
Speaker 1: He didn't get a direct hit, but it probably struck
Speaker 1: the house. John was sitting in a white oak on
Speaker 1: the edge of a field opening, and that white oak
Speaker 1: was the biggest tree, he said, within about fifty yards.
Speaker 1: All that being said, I still wouldn't be holding something
Speaker 1: metal in a thunderstorm for crying out loud. Juju told
Speaker 1: us all not to do that. But maybe the science
Speaker 1: doesn't really back it up. But here is John and
Speaker 1: he's driving down the road, barely hanging on to consciousness,
Speaker 1: but he's managed to contact his wife and he hears
Speaker 1: her voice.
Speaker 2: And then hearing her voice really really helped, and then
Speaker 2: I I knew. I just had this like rush of
Speaker 2: energy where I knew I could make it to the
Speaker 2: hospital because if I pulled over and called an ambulance
Speaker 2: or she tried to get me, I felt like it
Speaker 2: was gonna be roughly around the same time as if
Speaker 2: I just pulled over and wait. Looking back, maybe it
Speaker 2: wasn't the smartest thing to do, but she's talking to me,
Speaker 2: and then her perspective of the story, she said, I
Speaker 2: wasn't making any sense.
Speaker 4: She said I was.
Speaker 2: She didn't know what happened. She just knew something was
Speaker 2: wrong from like the sound of my voice. And I get,
Speaker 2: you know, I get towards Greenland area, and that's when
Speaker 2: I felt like, Okay, I think I can make it,
Speaker 2: And she said I was making a little bit more sense.
Speaker 2: I could start, you know, piecing little pieces together. She
Speaker 2: was just she just kept repeating, keep talking, keep talking,
Speaker 2: keep talking. So at that point she was able to realize, okay,
Speaker 2: he's if something, if he stops talking, we can go
Speaker 2: get him help. So finally I get to the hospital
Speaker 2: and I remember her face when she saw my head,
Speaker 2: and she tried to like pose herself because she didn't
Speaker 2: want to freak me out more but then she knew
Speaker 2: it was really serious, and she gets me out of
Speaker 2: the truck getting to the hospital, and it was just
Speaker 2: I was just like a zombie, basically had no idea.
Speaker 2: I wasn't making sense. She was doing mostly talking for me,
Speaker 2: and then the people are just looking at me, like
Speaker 2: what happened? And then she said lightning. And that's when
Speaker 2: everybody just you know, you know, with trauma whatever. And
Speaker 2: they just brought me into a on a bed and
Speaker 2: hooked up so many machines. Again, I'm kind of fuzzy.
Speaker 2: I don't remember a lot of it. She know, she
Speaker 2: remembers more of that. And then I mean, I was
Speaker 2: I think my blood pressure was in the one nineties.
Speaker 2: I mean it was bad. I had no fluids in me.
Speaker 2: They had to hook me up to I sweated everything
Speaker 2: out of my system just trying to get off that
Speaker 2: mountain and then just all the energy it took to
Speaker 2: be able to get out.
Speaker 1: Let's see what happened to Spence. He's managed to get
Speaker 1: a garbled text message out to our men's church group thread.
Speaker 1: It's incoherent, but it mentions something about lightning.
Speaker 4: And this one guy named Dalton, he's like an aircraft
Speaker 4: guy somehow Dalton. He's like the Spence Whisper because he
Speaker 4: figures it out. He's like, guys, I think Spence needs help.
Speaker 4: He's hit by lightning instantly, they like mobilized. And I
Speaker 4: have a friend Zach Newcomb. He's like one of my
Speaker 4: oldest best friends.
Speaker 1: That Zach is my older brother Zach.
Speaker 4: And he was walking out the door on his way
Speaker 4: to Low's. So he says, I'm coming, and so I
Speaker 4: stand up and I start like quasi motoing it like crawling.
Speaker 4: So I'm like, I'll go, I'll go get over there
Speaker 4: to the gate. So I limp over the gate and
Speaker 4: I get there and I collapse. And here in a
Speaker 4: red Tacoma comes the hero of the hour, my friend
Speaker 4: Zach nukelemb and he whips in and I'm there and
Speaker 4: I'm so weak and nothing works and he pulls up.
Speaker 4: He thought I was dead, I mean from what he said.
Speaker 4: But he got there and he had to essentially pick
Speaker 4: me up and put me in his truck and then ran.
Speaker 4: And it was I've got a history with Zach. It
Speaker 4: was kind of all funny because like Zach helped me.
Speaker 4: He's a therapist too, and he helped me when I
Speaker 4: got back from the war from like being blown up
Speaker 4: a few times or being close to it, and so
Speaker 4: like I look at him and I'm kind of like
Speaker 4: bobbing around, and I'm like, Zach, I'm a tough sob
Speaker 4: are not. And then I like start laughing, and then
Speaker 4: I have like a flashback and I start crying, and
Speaker 4: then I'm like laughing, and I'm like, I think it's
Speaker 4: the war and it was like the perfect person, right,
Speaker 4: And so I'm like going on this roller coaster. We
Speaker 4: hit a traffic jam and I'm like, Zach, I think
Speaker 4: you're gonna have to ride. I don't go around the
Speaker 4: other side. They get me to the er and all that,
Speaker 4: and so i know I'm gonna be okay, but I'm like,
Speaker 4: my speeches were turning. I still can't very well on
Speaker 4: my right side. I think where the lightning came in,
Speaker 4: and we get to the er.
Speaker 1: Spence slowly regains the function of his body and voice.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting that I haven't told you is that
Speaker 1: when he got struck, there was not even a storm
Speaker 1: directly overhead. For real, there was not a lightning storm
Speaker 1: going on around him. There were just storms in the
Speaker 1: area and he still got struck, which is wild because
Speaker 1: it came completely without warning, which begs the question, how
Speaker 1: far away can lightning strike away from the storm. I know,
Speaker 1: just the weather analyst. I'm told he's a chief.
Speaker 5: I usually tell people be aware, even if you're up
Speaker 5: to twenty five even close to thirty miles away. Now,
Speaker 5: not every storm's going to do that. The tricky thing
Speaker 5: with storms is, you know, like you mentioned the eye
Speaker 5: of a storm, there's weird.
Speaker 3: Differentferences with some storms.
Speaker 5: In some cases, if you have an anvil cloud, you
Speaker 5: can get what's called an anvil crawler, and the lightning
Speaker 5: crawls up the anvil and then it shoots its way.
Speaker 3: Miles and miles.
Speaker 5: And typically some of the longer bolts that you get
Speaker 5: far out ahead of a storm, those are typically positive bolts,
Speaker 5: and they're typically on the edge of the thunderstorm.
Speaker 3: In some cases, those can actually go out.
Speaker 5: As far as twenty five plus miles from the actual
Speaker 5: storm itself, on the leading edge. And so, you know,
Speaker 5: typical thunderstorms they tell people around ten miles. But some
Speaker 5: of the more unstable environments, when you get some of
Speaker 5: that positive lightning as well, it can easily go fifteen
Speaker 5: twenty even upwards of close to thirty miles ahead of
Speaker 5: the storm.
Speaker 1: So mister weather two two five is telling me that
Speaker 1: you can be struck by lightning if you're within thirty
Speaker 1: miles of the storm. That is ridiculous and not even fair.
Speaker 1: But it even gets worse. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: the National Weather Service reports lightning traveling almost ninety miles
Speaker 1: ninety miles out of the anvil head of a thunderstorm
Speaker 1: near the Kennedy Space Center. They documented this, and for
Speaker 1: your notes, June, July, and August are the three highest
Speaker 1: months for lightning strikes. They peak in July, but Spence
Speaker 1: was hit in February and John was hitting September. I'd
Speaker 1: like to see what other wild lightning stories Josh has
Speaker 1: heard of.
Speaker 3: So there's a couple.
Speaker 5: One of the stats that I heard was in terms
Speaker 5: of lightning strikes to a human being in a lifetime,
Speaker 5: someone was struck seven times and that's the record to
Speaker 5: this day. So that's one because I just can't imagine
Speaker 5: going about life. And it sounded like, you know, the
Speaker 5: stat didn't give all the information, but it sounded like
Speaker 5: it was. At the same time, I don't know how
Speaker 5: anyone could just go on getting struck by lightning seven
Speaker 5: times that I would be terrified to go outside if
Speaker 5: that were the case. So yeah, there's that, And then
Speaker 5: there's always crazy stories too. Unfortunately, I hear this one
Speaker 5: a lot, but lightning leading to house fires. Other ones
Speaker 5: that I've seen too is it was, oh, it was
Speaker 5: like twenty fourteen there was a lightning strike. It was
Speaker 5: a very famous video a pickup truck that got struck
Speaker 5: and it actually blew up the concrete and it damaged
Speaker 5: the truck when it was driving through that lightning strike.
Speaker 5: I've seen some videos of lightning hitting cars and it
Speaker 5: can melt the dashboard type thing. So it's really weird because,
Speaker 5: you know, lightning, it's one of those phenomenons that we
Speaker 5: can kind of tell you it's gonna happen, but every
Speaker 5: experience is unique and weird. So you know, there's people
Speaker 5: that have experienced lightning and cars all have a different
Speaker 5: experience of you know, it struck the car and didn't
Speaker 5: do anything to it fully melted the dashboard type thing.
Speaker 1: There's the wives tell that if you get struck by lightning,
Speaker 1: then once you're more likely to be hit again. Could
Speaker 1: that be true? Roy Sullivan was a park ranger in
Speaker 1: the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and he became known
Speaker 1: as the human lightning Rod after being struck seven times. Yep,
Speaker 1: he's the guy that Josh was talking about. There's a
Speaker 1: webpage that cites all the specific circumstances of his strikes,
Speaker 1: and they all seem like the outings of a normal
Speaker 1: outdoorsy guy, you know, one that worked outside. Once he
Speaker 1: was fishing, Once he was in a fire tower waiting
Speaker 1: out of storm. Once he was out in the woods
Speaker 1: and walking back to his truck while he was working,
Speaker 1: and he claimed that it felt like the storm was
Speaker 1: chasing him. Once his hair caught on fire after he
Speaker 1: got struck. All the strikes were documented by the Park Service.
Speaker 1: He died in nineteen eighty three at age seventy one,
Speaker 1: being struck seven times. He didn't die because of a
Speaker 1: lightning strike. But Spence has something to say about this
Speaker 1: idea of getting hit twice. These stories happened after a strike.
Speaker 4: It's interesting looking back, I had I was up in
Speaker 4: our haller, but this lightning bolt started up in the
Speaker 4: sky and in slow motion it was like coming for me,
Speaker 4: and then it just like wamn, it hit this ash tree,
Speaker 4: like a couple hundred yards away, and I remember like
Speaker 4: feeling like a little kid, like I got like I
Speaker 4: almost wept myself. But it's like I saw it coming
Speaker 4: and it just like went down. And then later in
Speaker 4: that summer, I had a storm. I'd finished up moving
Speaker 4: birds and I had a storm pop up, and I
Speaker 4: had lightning bolts hitting near and so they say like
Speaker 4: once you get.
Speaker 3: Hit after the fact, after the accidental.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I had two lightning strikes nearby, and I felt
Speaker 4: like there's that part in the office where Dwight sets
Speaker 4: it on fire and he throws fire crackers and they're
Speaker 4: like the fire shooting at us, and I feel like
Speaker 4: the lightning shooting at me, you know, like I just
Speaker 4: feel like it ads it out for me. So when
Speaker 4: I see a storm now, I'm just like nope, And
Speaker 4: if you don't want me around you, like it's just so.
Speaker 4: I don't know if there's truth to that, but they
Speaker 4: say you're more likely to get caught.
Speaker 1: Sounds to me like lightning is living rent free and
Speaker 1: Spence's head and probably John's two, and it would in
Speaker 1: mind if I got struck, But you just never know.
Speaker 1: I've got a question for Josh, is it possible there's
Speaker 1: more lightning today than ever before?
Speaker 5: So most of the research I'm looking at, they're accounting
Speaker 5: for you know, we've had lightning since the beginning of time,
Speaker 5: but obviously with more talk of more storm activity and
Speaker 5: hit everything along those lines. I mean, we've had several
Speaker 5: hurricanes in recent years that had an uptick in lightning
Speaker 5: and typically you didn't see that much lightning.
Speaker 3: Near the eyewall.
Speaker 5: Uh So there is a little a little talk going
Speaker 5: around with research that I'm reading and everything that says
Speaker 5: that there is a little bit of an increase in
Speaker 5: lightning over the last decade as we're getting more storm activity.
Speaker 5: And obviously for some of us here in the South,
Speaker 5: it may not feel like it because we get storms
Speaker 5: all the time, but you know, our atmosphere anywhere Gulf
Speaker 5: Coast areas all the way up into central United States,
Speaker 5: and we get more storms, we see more of it.
Speaker 5: But there is some research to indicate that there is
Speaker 5: an increase in lightning over the last decade or so.
Speaker 5: You're staying with a grin, You do the sound of hailstone's.
Speaker 4: Hit its in?
Speaker 1: Is that not batty?
Speaker 4: Hits me like an.
Speaker 1: If you're waiting for the sky to fall. It sounds
Speaker 1: like there's an uptick of lightning in the world, and
Speaker 1: that's good to know. That dang Turnpike song is one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. I'd now like to ask Josh if
Speaker 1: there are any other wives tells about lightning that he'd
Speaker 1: like to debunk.
Speaker 5: So obviously the metal one, that one has, you know,
Speaker 5: stuck with me just because obviously, I mean even today
Speaker 5: people talk about, you know, metal is going to lead
Speaker 5: to lightning, that type thing. You know, standing under a
Speaker 5: tree means you're going to be safe. That's not the case.
Speaker 5: If lightning strikes that tree, you're going to be you know,
Speaker 5: awfully close to that. Actually, I think one of the
Speaker 5: most one of the most interesting ones I hear is
Speaker 5: if someone is str by lightning, you cannot touch them.
Speaker 3: Because you're going to get electrocuted. That's a wives tale.
Speaker 5: It's perfectly safe to you know, assist them with medical
Speaker 5: treatment and stuff. It's not like you have to wait
Speaker 5: thirty minutes and then the charge goes away type deal.
Speaker 5: The other one too, once you stop hearing the thunder
Speaker 5: in the middle of a thunderstorm, it's absolutely over. We
Speaker 5: typically tell people to wait thirty minutes after you've heard
Speaker 5: that last lightning strike to make sure that.
Speaker 3: There's not going to be that one last bolt.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 5: And then one of the ones that I hear is
Speaker 5: the debate of does lightning strike the same area? You know,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of people that they'll say it doesn't.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of people that say it does. Hate
Speaker 5: to break it to the people that say it doesn't
Speaker 5: strike twice. There's actually instances where lightning can strike the
Speaker 5: same area multiple times in a row. And I've actually
Speaker 5: seen videos where it can strike the same thing six
Speaker 5: times in a row. So lightning does strike twice, and
Speaker 5: it can actually happen more than twice in some locations.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, getting under a tree in a
Speaker 1: storm can be the worst thing that you can do,
Speaker 1: because that tree is gonna be the tallest thing around.
Speaker 1: Being shorter out in the open is better, even though
Speaker 1: that sounds completely ridiculous. And lying flat on the ground
Speaker 1: is a bad idea too, they say, or at least
Speaker 1: the Internet says, because it opens you up to a
Speaker 1: stronger charge if lightning hits near you, like more your
Speaker 1: body is touching the ground. But that's exactly what I
Speaker 1: did when I got caught before daylight in a bad
Speaker 1: thunderstorm while slipping up shoeless on a big old gobbler.
Speaker 1: I threw my gun and laid flat on the ground
Speaker 1: with lightning cracking all around me. I call that story
Speaker 1: the Lightning Bird, and ended up killing him after daylight
Speaker 1: after the storm passed. But basically, the best lightning advice
Speaker 1: you can get is to get the heck out of
Speaker 1: dodge and into a building or car as fast as possible,
Speaker 1: no matter what you've got to do. Josh said something
Speaker 1: earlier about the damage of all lightning strikes being unique,
Speaker 1: But what's also unique is how people respond to getting
Speaker 1: struck by lightning, which brings us back to where we started.
Speaker 1: Could lightning be used as a connector point to something bigger?
Speaker 1: Both Spence and John had unique things happened after the strikes.
Speaker 1: If you remember, the explosion caused Spence to flash back
Speaker 1: to war, but he actually thinks it might have helped him.
Speaker 4: I'd actually done a good job. I thought I'd put
Speaker 4: it all behind me, so it just kind of like
Speaker 4: getting the last little bit out, you know. It didn't
Speaker 4: like it didn't I didn't get hung up on it.
Speaker 4: It was just kind of interesting.
Speaker 2: It was still there, so you feel like it kind
Speaker 2: of purged some of that out.
Speaker 4: Stuff that I didn't know was in there, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'd done a good job of working on
Speaker 4: it and putting it behind me, but yeah, I guess
Speaker 4: there was still a little bit left to come out.
Speaker 1: So here is an internet experienced that John had.
Speaker 2: I remember, like four or five days later, when things
Speaker 2: started to calm down, I was thinking, I'm like why
Speaker 2: I was having this like almost like a vision of
Speaker 2: a baby crying. And that's when I remembered when I
Speaker 2: woke up the first time I woke up getting shot
Speaker 2: out of stand I heard a baby crying, and that's
Speaker 2: when I started like open my eyes and realizing like, okay,
Speaker 2: what's going on? And I couldn't piece together why the
Speaker 2: baby was crying. And backstory, me and my wife, we've
Speaker 2: been trying to have a baby for the past you know,
Speaker 2: nine months before then and with no luck. And then
Speaker 2: two weeks after the accident, we found out we were pregnant.
Speaker 3: So that I thought was a.
Speaker 2: Really beautiful part of the whole story. How you know,
Speaker 2: through something that was traumatic and horrible, something beautiful kind
Speaker 2: of came out of it.
Speaker 1: But often in traumatic events, people remember more and more
Speaker 1: things about the second surrounding the event as time passes. Well,
Speaker 1: John was on the ground out in the woods. He
Speaker 1: remembers hearing a baby crying. It's pretty unique. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: he never got his bear, or he has it yet. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's always next year. I can't thank you enough for
Speaker 1: listening to Bear Grease, for listening to Brent's This Country Life,
Speaker 1: and for listening to Lakes Backwoods University. Please share our
Speaker 1: podcast with a friend. If you know somebody that you
Speaker 1: think is prone to be struck by lightning, send this
Speaker 1: one to him. We really hope you enjoyed it, and
Speaker 1: as always, keep the wild places as wild because that's
Speaker 1: where the bears live.