• Question: What happens to you if you get struck by lightning?

    Asked by 962curm44 to Daniel, Fiona, Hazel, Jacque, K, Matthew on 14 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: K Sasitharan

      K Sasitharan answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      First of all Lightning can consist of up to 300kV energy, which can heat the surrounding air to many times hotter than even the sun. It’s something that powerful we are talking about. So severe burns would occur in the body. The electric discharge of the Lightning can mess with the heart’s rhythm and can lead to a Cardiac arrest which can result in death. When electric currents enters the skull, it literally heats up the brain cells, permanently damaging them.

    • Photo: Hazel Gibson

      Hazel Gibson answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      A lightning strike is essentially a giant electrical charge entering and leaving your body. How much it affects you depends on where it hits you, but whatever happens you will get burned from the effect of all that electricity. Sometimes those burns can leave a lightning-like pattern from your capillary veins bursting as the lightning travels through your body. You will also probably have some kind of heart attack as the electrical surge causes the natural electrically stimulated rhythm of our heartbeat to be interrupted or even stopped. People who have been struck by lightning and survive (which is probably more common that you might expect) often experience physical and mental problems that last long after the strike itself.

    • Photo: Jacque Cilliers

      Jacque Cilliers answered on 15 Mar 2018:

      You know… I was almost hit by lightning when I lived in South Africa. I was standing next to my car and there was a very bright white flash, and I felt all the hairs on my body lift upwards towards the static electricity!!
      Lightning is made up of electricity, heat and light. When you are hit by lightning, you are both electrified and burnt at the same time. The electricity can disrupt your heart rhythms as it moves through your body and out into the ground. Lightning will always go out and into the ground. The heat is what burns your skin and can also burst blood vessels. Amazingly, 90% of people struck by lightning survive. So if you were Zeus, and you hit 100 people with lightning, only 10 would die.

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