Lightning is a very common thing in daily life. It looks amazing from a distance, but it can kill people when it comes into contact. So how does lightning electrocute people?
Although direct lightning is powerful enough to kill a person, lightning still has many weird and rare ways to cause a person to die young.
Lightning is the result of the interaction between positive and negative charges. Positive and negative charges always attract each other. But in thunderstorms, especially in clouds, huge positive and negative energy fields are formed and remain repellent. Eventually, these charges accumulate in large numbers, exceed their repulsion tolerance, collide, and ultimately form lightning.
Charge collisions often occur within or between clouds. However, positive charges on the ground can also come into contact with negative charges below the clouds, forming lightning. A bolt of lightning can generally reach a voltage of 300 million volts and a current of 30,000 amps. It can heat the surrounding air to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is five times the surface temperature of the sun. Therefore, the heat and electricity brought by a direct lightning strike are fatal.
However, humans are not the primary target of lightning. When lightning wants to reach the ground, it takes the easiest path, usually hitting the tallest thing nearby. Therefore, direct lightning strikes to humans are very rare and account for a very small proportion of deaths caused by lightning strikes.
Indirect lightning strikes, which occur when we come into contact with an object that has been struck by lightning, are almost as rare as direct lightning strikes. Lightning can also be transferred between objects if it helps it reach the ground faster. For example, if it is transferred from a tree to a person, this is side conduction of lightning. About 1/3 of lightning fatalities are related to it, and there are even records of sideways conduction of lightning between people, like the world's worst game of catch.
When lightning finally reaches the ground, people are often killed by the electrical current it creates. These currents spread in a ring, traveling up one leg, through our body, out the other leg, and onward. Although these currents are not as strong as a direct lightning strike, they can still interfere with a person's normal electrical rhythm, causing cardiac arrest .
Recently, scientists discovered a fifth way of death from lightning. When conditions are right for lightning to occur, many things on Earth, including us, can accumulate a positive charge. Even if these positive charges, known as flowing charges, do not encounter negative charges, they can still discharge strongly when lightning occurs nearby, and the impact can be enough to stop the heart. Worse than this, there may be a sixth way to die from lightning...
Based on our understanding of the effects of electricity and heat on the human body, sometimes victims will suffer unexplained injuries, such as a ruptured spleen and internal blood bruising. . Some researchers believe that this was caused by the powerful shock wave generated by the sound of lightning. This is still only a theory, but experiments have provided some evidence for this.
Regardless of how it happens, it is reassuring to know that lightning casualties are much less common than before, with an average of 47 people killed by lightning each year. Hundreds of people have done so over the past few decades, and 2017 saw the lowest death toll in modern history, with just 16 deaths.
The reason why the death toll has been reduced is that the infrastructure guides lightning, and people have gradually mastered how to avoid lightning. When it comes to safety, the best thing to do is stay indoors during lightning protection and for at least 30 minutes after a thunderstorm ends.
So if you are outdoors, do not stand on high ground. Try to squat as low as possible. Also, do not stand on isolated high structures - such as under a big tree!
