I figured either a bus driver or airline pilot.

 

If you stand next to a tree in a thunderstorm it might not be the lightning that kills you, it could be the chunks of wood thown out as the tree explodes. I've seen decent sized pieces lying 30 metres or more away from the tree.

 

But when your hit by lightning it changes the polarity of your body making you a lightning magnet.

our bodies have a polarity? How much a jolt does it take to reverse one's poles? If I've been hit with a tazer before, am I also possibly a lightning magnet?

 

First I've ever heard of it. I am not a believer. Have credible links?

It is not how I want to die, but when. Dying is easy, living is hard.

 

Personally, I put it into the "snake oil" category. I chose not to say anything previously because I didn't want to risk stepping on someone's pet beliefs.

 

well there is definately a correlation between people being hit once and those same people being hit again, and again, and again. I would like to know why, although I've never heard of us being polarized.

 

well there is definately a correlation between people being hit once and those same people being hit again, and again, and again. I would like to know why, although I've never heard of us being polarized.

It's probably the same reason why some people who have been struck by lightning can't wear analog watches. A friend of mine was struck by lightning when he was a kid, and ever since analog watches would run backwards when he was wearing them. The same went for my grandfather when he was still around. Couldn't wear an analog watch because of (I think) a lighting storm he got caught in when he was younger.

 

well there is definately a correlation between people being hit once and those same people being hit again, and again, and again. I would like to know why, although I've never heard of us being polarized.

I definitely agree that there is a very high correlation. Every person that has been hit again was hit once and not one single person that has not been hit once has been hit again.

The question is whether someone that has been hit in the past is more likely to be hit again in the future than someone that has never been hit at all. Finding one person that has been hit seven times may or may not be indicative of this. To get some kind of a feel for this, we can do a very simple model making some very simple assumptions and see how reasonable it is for the observed multiple-hit situations to occur.

Based on some weather and lightening web sites (like the National Weather Service and a national lightening laboratory) people are struck by lightening somewhere between 400 and 1000 times a year, make the odds of a given person being struck about 1 in 400,000. I saw other numbers that ranged from 1 in 200,000 to 1 in 800,000, so 1:400,000 is in the ballpark. Numbers for the odds of people struck during your lifetime range from 1 in 5000 to 1 in 10,000.

So, let's assume that things are nice an uniform and that there are 300 million people in the U.S. that are at risk for being hit by lightening and that they all have an equal change of 1 in P of being hit during a lifetime? Clearly those assumptions are idealistic, but it gives us a place to start.

So what is the expected number of people that have been hit at least seven times during their lifetime? We can come at this a few different ways, but the end result is that you expect, pure by random chance, for there to be a small number of people that have been hit multiple times. In fact, if there weren't, that would be extremely strong evidence that getting hit once somehow innocculuates you from future hits. The expected numbers from this real simple model don't match the actual multiple-hit observations too well, but that could be because the basic assumption (that odds of getting hit are independent of being hit before) or that the other assumptions (uniform distribution of lightning and everyone equally likely to get hit) are too unreasonable. I suspect (but certainly am not asserting) that it is probably the latter. We know that some areas of the country are much more likely to produce a lightning strike that elsewhere and it is also obvious that some people, because of their jobs, hobbies, or attitudes, are at much higher risk of being zapped. Just consider the guy in the article that has been hit seven times -- after being hit six times he is out riding his lawnmower during a thunderstorm!

It akin to the fact that there are people that have won lotteries two and even three times. Is it because winning once somehow changed their luck polarity? No. When you run the numbers, you expect there to be a small number of multi-time winners and the observed numbers are within the confidence bounds of the expected numbers.

 

It's probably the same reason why some people who have been struck by lightning can't wear analog watches. A friend of mine was struck by lightning when he was a kid, and ever since analog watches would run backwards when he was wearing them. The same went for my grandfather when he was still around. Couldn't wear an analog watch because of (I think) a lighting storm he got caught in when he was younger.

This one I'm throwing a flag on. If this were true, there would be tons of papers in the refereed literature on it. Heck, just think about the following call to one of the late night shows: "Yeah, I was hit by lightning and it changed something in my body. Now, whenever I where an analog watch, it runs backwards. I'm willing to come on your show and demonstrate this. I'll let you supply a few watches and we can also randomly pick people in the audience that have analog watches and I'll but them on to show that it's no trick." I'll bet they would fly that guy to New York (or where ever the show is filmed) within days and have him on the air within a couple of weeks.

In fact, I'll make this offer: Have your friend come to Colorado Springs and demonstrate this phenomenon to me, using a selection of analog watches that I supply. If even one of them runs backwards when placed on his arm, I will refund his standard travel expenses (i.e., GSA rates) plus give him $1000. In exchange, for one year I get to market him to places such as news and talk shows and research organizations and my take will only be 1% of any payments he receives or contracts for related to this phenomenon for a period of five years. The only thing he risks is having to eat his travel expenses when he comes here.

 

So why is it if you have been hit with lightning before you are likely to be hit again? How does it make sense physically? Do you now have a slight positive charge or something?

 

But if you're in that 30%, then it would be awesome, because you'd probably die on impact and won't feel a thing. You'll be dead before you hit the ground. That's how I'd like to go....

Not quite, you tend to get hit then suffer organ failure and die in a couple minutes or a lil faster if its cardiac. Rarely do people just get hit and dead when they hit the ground. It usually takes minutes for things to fail even hours.

 

The shed shielded you, providing a path around you for the current.

I saw a bolt knock a 4 ft diameter hole in a upscale house on the 3rd floor. All depends on where that current can get to ground and hopefully your not the fastest route. It went through the roof, through the crawlspace, through the ceiling, then ??? cause no one was there.

 

So why is it if you have been hit with lightning before you are likely to be hit again? How does it make sense physically? Do you now have a slight positive charge or something?

Two things.

One, coincidences do happen, when they do, they are remarked upon, and grow in the telling.

Two, similar behavior begets similar results. It someone runs under a tree or plays golf near a thunderstorm (with cleats on) then they up their chances considerably.

This is why scientists tend to reject anecdotal stories. They sound great, but when you actually look at the statistical evidence they evaporate.

 

Our doctor told my uncle that lightning actually comes from the clouds to about 10-20 ft, then a bolt shoots up from the ground to complete the circuit. The electonic polorization on the ground actually depends where the strike will hit combined with the easiest way to get there. He said once your hit your body is polorized differently to the tune of the ground polorization of where lightning is looking for. This may be hooyee, it may be true. This is what the doctor told us when he got hit the first time(Late 80's). But as Bill says, he didn't exactly get out of the way for lightning so being hit 3 times in 6 years may have just been coincidence, may be not. We live in the lightning capital and he would walk out in the rain with an umbrella to hold it over my mom and aunts heads. We'd just sit in the car yelling at him to go back inside we'll just wait it out. He'd been hit so many time if we saw lightning near we made sure Uncle Bob wasn't standing next to us. Theres still a lot of missing data to the equation.

 

We've also had occurencese where there were no storms and a bolt traveled almost 4-5 miles horizontally then came down and hit a runner on Bayshore blvd(Googlemap it) He died, I suspect because he was running and his heart rate was up. People also say lightning will go for something high. Having lived on a 4 acre pond for 18 years and riding my bike home around it I've seen lighting hit the middle of the pond and skip all the houses and trees around everywhere, even skipped me on my bike riding on a street on the pond. So lightning has its mysteries still. I don't think we can really confirm it or deny it.

 

Maybe your doctor should go through a full MRI to unpolarize himself.

 

While ground to air is more prevalent, it can go both ways. There has been quite a bit of research on lightning itself. I have found a lot of it interesting. Have you done any serious research? The distance lightning travels is not that big a mystery, especially since we don't have a clue of the variables on any particular day. Air is not homogenous, humidity can vary a lot within an air mass, and humidity is also conductivity.

There is no mechanism where as people can be polarized that I know of, we are not plates on a capacitor. We are big bags of dirty water with hard bits on the inside, basically conductive. Occasionally we become part of a discharge path.

I have seen nothing to change that basic opinion. I am open to evidence though. Not stories of someone who has been hit 30 times, but real research.

 

This one I'm throwing a flag on. If this were true, there would be tons of papers in the refereed literature on it. Heck, just think about the following call to one of the late night shows: "Yeah, I was hit by lightning and it changed something in my body. Now, whenever I where an analog watch, it runs backwards. I'm willing to come on your show and demonstrate this. I'll let you supply a few watches and we can also randomly pick people in the audience that have analog watches and I'll but them on to show that it's no trick." I'll bet they would fly that guy to New York (or where ever the show is filmed) within days and have him on the air within a couple of weeks.

In fact, I'll make this offer: Have your friend come to Colorado Springs and demonstrate this phenomenon to me, using a selection of analog watches that I supply. If even one of them runs backwards when placed on his arm, I will refund his standard travel expenses (i.e., GSA rates) plus give him $1000. In exchange, for one year I get to market him to places such as news and talk shows and research organizations and my take will only be 1% of any payments he receives or contracts for related to this phenomenon for a period of five years. The only thing he risks is having to eat his travel expenses when he comes here.

A seasoned attorney couldn't have articulated a better case for raising the Waders-On flag.

 

I'm just saying what the doctor told my uncle in the 80's dude. I'm sure more research has been done since then. Am I a lightning freak, nah I probably know as much as the next guy. I just see it much more often. Like right now.

 

I remember a story where a soccer field had a lightning strike that killed a kid. They installed a sensor system to detect when the electrostatic field were high enough to generate lightning. It worked, probably saving lives within a year. The alarm sounded, and within 30 minutes lightning hit the scoreboard sign. With the proper sensors, you can predict when lightning will strike, simply by measuring the volts/ft over the predicted area.

I remember another experiment where they had similar sensors, and model rockets with wire spooling behind. When the field strength hit a certain level, a rocket would be launched, and they would measure magnitude and duration of the strike.

The launch system was a air tube they would blow into, to prevent the lightning back tracking.