# Old column about surviving lightening strikes.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-column-about-surviving-lightening-strikes/708625
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
**Created:** [December 31, 2014, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-column-about-surviving-lightening-strikes/708625 "2014-12-31T16:03:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2014, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-column-about-surviving-lightening-strikes/708625/1 "2014-12-31T16:03:59Z")
I happened upon [this old column](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2683/have-people-actually-survived-being-hit-by-lightning-multiple-times) about people surviving multiple lightening strikes while participating in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18016245#post18016245) about “average fighting skills” in which a poster **GusNSpot** claimed that his family had been the victim of multiple violent home invasions to different members at different times (which frankly strained credulity given the actual rarity of those violent home invasion events) also then claimed to have been hit by lightening twice (having discussed it before on these boards). Indeed his story (other than now stating 1960 instead of 1959) was the one referenced by **Una** in the linked Cecil column.
Now leaving my doubts about Gus’s claims aside, I am pretty surprised that Roy Sullivan’s story is so uncritically accepted as true.
It appears that the odds of being hit by lightening over a lifetime are roughly 1 in 12,000. Now figure that someone who works outside in a more than average lightening prone region may have 100 times greater risk. The odds then of an individual being hit 7 times is still one out of over 3.5 trillion (3,583,180,800,000 to be precise). Best estimate of [humans who have ever lived](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_humans_who_have_ever_lived)is 100 to 115 billion, so the odds are pretty dang unlikely that this has happened ever in the entire history of humanity even if every human ever had been at that 100 times greater risk.
Six of them occurring in an eight year span and no one’s skeptic meter dings that maybe the docs were not so up on the then relatively recent concept of Munchausen Syndrome and did not consider that anyone would self inflict electrical burns?
Seems a bit more likely that Roy Sullivan had one or _maybe_ two real occurrences and then faked the rest (pretty much one a year) in response to the attention he received.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [December 31, 2014, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-column-about-surviving-lightening-strikes/708625/2 "2014-12-31T16:50:39Z")
Forgot to link to the source for the 1 in 12,000. [Here](http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/14/tech/innovation/climate-change-lightning/). Sorry.
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### Author:  [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2015, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-column-about-surviving-lightening-strikes/708625/3 "2015-01-02T19:41:23Z")
\
trying to make something lighter, less heavy: lightening
electricity flowing through the sky: lightning
\
Being struck by lightning [messes with your memory](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201304/struck-lightning). I think it’s possible that he thinks he remembers more strikes than there actually were.
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### Author:  [@buddy431](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddy431)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2015, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-column-about-surviving-lightening-strikes/708625/4 "2015-01-02T20:37:39Z")
OK, the odds that he would get struck by lightning are undoubtedly higher than 1 in 12000; he’s a park ranger. He spent a lot more time outside than most people, in an area of the country that got quite a few storms. Still, 7 is pretty darn unlikely.
At least some of the strikes were documented by park staff and doctors, so he’s not making them all up. Now, some people do suspect that [some of them might have been fabricated](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/inside-the-life-of-the-man-known-as-the-spark-ranger/2013/08/15/947cf2d8-ea40-11e2-8f22-de4bd2a2bd39_story.html). Some of the records that supposedly at one time existed can’t be found any more. Maybe he got struck a few times, decided he liked the publicity, and so decided that he was really struck a few more times.
But even if he was struck 7 times - yes, it’s extremely unlikely that he would be struck 7 times. It’s pretty unlikely that anyone would be struck 7 times. But unlikely events do happen. Humans are good at finding patterns, and any specific enough set of circumstances is incredibly unlikely to have happened, and yet obviously they happen.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2015, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-column-about-surviving-lightening-strikes/708625/5 "2015-01-02T23:43:08Z")
Thanks for that link. Nice to know I am not the only who thought this smelled faked, for at least any more than the first two. Note from that article that the “confirmations” were exclusively newspaper reports that his family doctor confirmed he was injured. Again, people with Munchausen Syndrome will self-inflict injury frequently.
The odds being higher based on being a park ranger was addressed in my op - I gave him, based on his job, 100 times more chance of being hit than the average person. And was then still improbable that it has ever happened _in all of human history_ even if _all_ humans ever were always at that same elevated risk.
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### Author:  [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-column-about-surviving-lightening-strikes/708625/6 "2015-01-06T18:32:53Z")
And what is the probability of being struck by lightning 7 times and not even once getting killed by it? Must be some weak sauce lightning there.