http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040827.html
All this lightning coursing through the phone lines faster than the latest political spin and with an even harder punch! But it seems like those incidents were a couple decades old. Presumably cordless and cell phones would not represent the same risk. Isn’t that correct?
:>Howard
New Jersey
I’d agree with you. The electricity in a cell is irrelevant, since it isn’t grounded.
Any metal is more likely to get a coating of ions in a storm, but it would be less than any larger metal object, like an umbrella, a golf club, or even a large jacket zipper.
On the other hand, two of Cecil’s examples were from Denmark, where a few days ago thirty-one cows all made it in one go into the Guiness Book of Records. They were sheltering under a tree when a lightning hit. It seems that certain things haven’t changed.
BUt what about the shower? Cecil gave examples of wire conductors such as telephones/appliances, but not any of people actually getting struck by lightening because they were showering or bathing (obviously, I’m not talking about outdoor activites, but rather in the bathroom).
Does anyone know if that is actually a hazard?
Thanks.
And what might happen if you’re taking a leak and lightning strikes - the pipes, the water, whatever. :eek:
What? You never wondered about this?
On TLC, once, I saw a program about lightning research. It seems that an object about to be struck sometimes emits an energy tendril of some sort (ground lightning?) and lightning from a cloud comes barrel-assing down, through the tendril and into the tree, house, you name it.
You’re referring to what scientists call “streamers”. Under the influence of huge voltage differences, every object on the ground under the area in the storm clouds where charge is buiding up emits these streamers, which are essentially long streams of charged particles. Meanwhile, from the clouds, the area of charge accumulation sends down its own tendril of charged particles, called the stepped leader. When the stepped leader touches one of the upreaching streamers, the electrical path is completed, and the brilliant return stroke–a massive current–flows from the ground to the clouds. It is the return stroke that you see as lightning.
This is the part about the column that intrigued me the most:
The anecdote about this phenomenon was incredible. In the fiction work Lonesome Dove, there is mention of lightning hopping along the horns of cattle, but I don’t remember if it was in the form of a ball. Maybe. Do we know any more about it, QED … or even … Cecil?
My grandma got struck by lightning once at our cottage. According to my dad, she was doing the dishes when lightning hit the building; it jumped out of the faucet and gave her a good whack. She blinked a few times, said, “I’m going to bed,” and slept for twelve hours. Then she was fine.
Me again! waves gaily
Something similar happened at my house when I was a kid. One of my younger brothers, in some sort of experiment, had strung copper wire from the t.v. antenna (one of those old ones on a pole outside the house) all the way across the backyard. One night during a thunderstorm three of us kids were in the kitchen engaged in various chores like washing dishes and preparing dinner. All of the sudden a huge jolt went through all three of us. I must have jumped a foot in the air, it startled me so much. We guessed lightning had somehow run into the house because the electric skillet I was using was dead as was the oven thermostat. The next morning we noticed the copper wire outside was charred black. My mother subsequently put a moratorium on further research within the household.
The lightning-related injuries reported in the medical journals mostly involve the telephone - maybe because they produce more interesting medical problems, I dunno. Ron Holle assured me, however, that fatalities and other injuries due to lightning conducted through pipes and wiring do occur, and spieled off a bunch of case reports to prove it. The figures I cited - five or six indoor lightning fatalities in the U.S. per year - were current.
There are two types of telephone-related lightning injury, electrical and acoustic. Electrical injuries obviously are not a concern if you’re using a cell or cordless phone. However, in theory you could still suffer acoustic injury (eardrum damage) due to noisy static discharge caused by lightning. The people in the cases cited in the column, all of which involved wired phones, suffered acoustic injury. That said, nobody I asked about this knew of a lightning-related injury involving a cell or cordless phone.
I agree that ball lightning is a fascinating phenomenon and may write a column about it.
Oh… wow.
Pun intended, O Great One? 
hyperventilates
The Mythbusters answered this one, essentially. Though I’d certainly like to hear The Master’s opinion on the matter.
They were testing the urban legend of a man who electrocuted himself when he urinated on the electrified rail from a subway. What they found was that the stream of urine (simulated by filling a balloon with urine) formed a stream of droplets rather than a coherent stream which couldn’t conduct the current back to the source, of course.
Actually, they finally did get it to work with a bigger stream of urine and a closer proximity to the rail. Details can be found here.
The other factor in the Mythbuster’s case is that they were only using house current (120 VAC). Higher voltages, e.g. lightning, would produce shockingly different results.
This was written about 10 years ago but is still a good overview of the phenomenon:
http://www.amasci.com/tesla/bltalb.txt
This article also mentions the submarine battery discharge incidents that were made famous on Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World TV show (that’s going back about 20 years now), though it does not detail the experiment they did on the programme with a soon-to-be decomissioned battery where they caught “something” on film.
I’ve personally seen ball lightning come off a lightning strike in the distance. Essentially a small chunk of light veered midway off the main strike in a completely horizontal direction and then disappeared after a couple seconds. I’ve never seen it up close though, nor would I want to.
I would definitely be up for your take on the subject, Cecil.
Actually, they used a 650v transformer (if you read the link). Still not anywhere near lightning voltages, but still.
Matt, not a good idea to use the word “Gaily”. (My middle name BTY), Galey) 
Cecil, a lousy telephone reciever cannot, by Decibles, fuck up you ear. It would blow out long befor that. A spark, on the other hand surely could.
