Lightning Strike on Camera
July 12, 2008 11:41 PM   Subscribe

 
Description via Waxy: "Flickr user hit by lightning while recording a rainstorm ("because you insisted, here's the unedited screaming version.")"
posted by Pronoiac at 12:05 AM on July 13, 2008


Also: *shudder*
posted by Pronoiac at 12:13 AM on July 13, 2008


"Oh God", she screamed.

Yeah, that's about right.
posted by bwg at 12:17 AM on July 13, 2008


Oooh, that's gotta hurt.
posted by wendell at 12:18 AM on July 13, 2008


Nice framing of the fpp. I read the poster's comment, then scrolled up to see what she was talking about... egads.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 12:32 AM on July 13, 2008


Hanging out of a second-floor window! I thought she was on a hillside.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 12:34 AM on July 13, 2008


I know she wasn't hit directly but by an arc, but I still wonder how/if that's going to affect her.

From this link:

How Do Lightning Injuries Affect People?

Lightning tends to be a nervous system injury and may affect the brain, autonomic nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. When the brain is affected, the person often has difficulty with short-term memory, coding new information and accessing old information, multitasking, distractibility, irritability and personality change.

"Patients have difficulty in all areas that require them to analyze more items of information than they can handle simultaneously. They present (appear) as slow because it takes longer for smaller than normal chunks of information to be processed. They present as distractible because they do not have the spare capacity to monitor irrelevant stimuli at the same time as they are attending to the relevant stimulus. They present as forgetful because while they are concentrating on point A, they do not have the processing space to think about point B simultaneously. They present as inattentive because when the amount of information that they are given exceeds their capacities, they cannot take it all in."

Early on, survivors may complain of intense headaches, ringing in the ears, dizziness, nausea, vomiting and other post-concussion types of symptoms. Survivors may also experience difficulty sleeping, sometimes sleeping excessively at first and then only two or three hours at a time. A few may develop seizure-like activity several weeks to months after the injury.

posted by miss lynnster at 12:45 AM on July 13, 2008 [3 favorites]


Ah hell. Now I'm watching lightning strikes on Youtube (there are a ton of them). And waterspouts. Woo hoo!
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 1:02 AM on July 13, 2008


Hmmm....I'd still rather win the lottery.

Though that was pretty badass.
posted by Weebot at 1:29 AM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite]


This was totally photoshopped.
posted by mullingitover at 2:42 AM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite]


miss lynnster writes "Patients have difficulty in all areas that require them to analyze more items of information than they can handle simultaneously. They present (appear) as slow because it takes longer for smaller than normal chunks of information to be processed. They present as distractible because they do not have the spare capacity to monitor irrelevant stimuli at the same time as they are attending to the relevant stimulus. They present as forgetful because while they are concentrating on point A, they do not have the processing space to think about point B simultaneously. They present as inattentive because when the amount of information that they are given exceeds their capacities, they cannot take it all in.'"

Or maybe heavy pot smokers are somehow highly likely to be struck by lightning?
posted by mullingitover at 2:45 AM on July 13, 2008


What the video doesn't show is the joke he had just finished telling:

"What's the main cause of pedophilia in this country?"

...

"Sexy kids"
posted by redteam at 3:02 AM on July 13, 2008 [7 favorites]


I met someone who had lost all sense of taste after suffering a lightning strike. I can only imagine what it would be like to go through life that way afterwards.
posted by marble at 3:23 AM on July 13, 2008


Don't Tase Me, God!
posted by Rykey at 4:18 AM on July 13, 2008 [12 favorites]


I met someone who had lost all sense of taste after suffering a lightning strike. I can only imagine what it would be like to go through life that way afterwards.

And yet, Bill Gates endured.
posted by Kinbote at 4:49 AM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite]


Well there is DEFINITELY exxageration going on in that report... . It threw me back a few feet Uh, no, you do not get thrown back a few feet and find the camera remaining magically pointing in the very same direction. I hate tornado and lightning reports because so much embellishment goes on.
posted by tinkertown at 5:00 AM on July 13, 2008


I had a Van der Graaf moment years ago. I was some yards away from a street lamp when it was struck; just before the bolt I felt what I thought was a (very strange) breeze. Someone later told me that my hair had stood straight out in all directions....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 5:06 AM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite]


This was very confusing - as usual, I was reading Metafilter, looking at Flickr, reading BBC News and several other things all at the same time, and the link in the FPP opened in the tab right next to this one where I was about to vote, so when I happened to click on its tab after looking at the pictures in the previous tab, I couldn't figure out whose photo I was looking at ...

Just a shame that it wasn't entered in the "lightening" (sic) photo contest I was voting in ...
posted by kcds at 5:40 AM on July 13, 2008


I'm still keeping "struck by lightning" on my list of things I don't want to experience. It just doesn't look fun.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 8:55 AM on July 13, 2008


I was shocked by a close strike once...it's the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. I won't tell you I was in a river when it happened because that would make me sound like an unbelievably stupid fucking idiot. Well, I was young, and I knew better, but the rain was so cold and the water was so warm...
posted by kozad at 9:09 AM on July 13, 2008


Doesn't seem any worse than peeing on an electric fence.

Which, granted, is on my list of things I don't want to experience. It does, however, make for a mildly amusing YouTube search term.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:15 AM on July 13, 2008



What the video doesn't show is the joke he had just finished telling:

"What's the main cause of pedophilia in this country?"

...

"Sexy kids"


Well, it all makes sense now. No wonder he was struck by lightning.
posted by miss lynnster at 9:16 AM on July 13, 2008


Flickr does video now? I thought it just did static images. That's cool.

...what?
posted by ZachsMind at 9:25 AM on July 13, 2008


Wow, I think this is the first FPP where I can honestly say, "seen that, bought the t-shirt." Thanks synergy!
posted by squared at 9:45 AM on July 13, 2008


Years ago, my mother was the farthest of 5 young girls standing under a tree that got hit by lightning. She was the only one who did not have permanent damage. The oldest girl, closest to the tree, lost the sight in one eye. My mother had lost touch with her of course, and got an address from the book left over from a ghost town reunion in the area, wrote to her, and a month later the lady hopped out of a car in front of Mom's house for a visit.
Apparently, in her late 80's, she visited a new eye doctor who took a look at it and said casually, "You know, we could fix that", and he did.
It's such a great story in so many ways, because what are the odds you'd find the woman, and then hear the end of the story, 60 years later. What must it be like to have binocular vision back after 60 years?
I used to ask my mother about every 10 years what it was like to get hit, but gave up when I never got an answer. I don't think she remembers, other than it was bad. She also remembers ball lightning rolling through the house from an open window as a child.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 9:57 AM on July 13, 2008 [3 favorites]


That soundtrack is totally going to get sampled and used on techno.
posted by w0mbat at 10:47 AM on July 13, 2008 [2 favorites]


What must it be like to have binocular vision back after 60 years?

Not necessarily nice. My father in law finally had a cataract out after donkey's years of being effectively unable to see out of that eye, and it caused him problems for a long time.* He found it really hard to integrate the two eyes back into a single 3-d view.

*Maybe still; I'd ask him but that risks being talked at about his eye and how his friend Terry O'Donnell had eyes too and he was a great big bugger like that Stephen Harper is and at least Harper is keeping the bloody immigrants under control...
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:17 AM on July 13, 2008


One evening years ago my aunt was horrified by a phone call from Granpa. "We've been hit!" he yelled frantically in his thick Irish accent.
"Who? What?"
"The dog and I! We've been struck by lightning!"
After some back and forth he assures her he's okay and she doesn't need to call an ambulance or come over. He also reveals that he's been sitting on a metal lawn chair with the dog tied to it, in the driveway, in a thunderstorm.
Twenty minutes later he calls back and screams "It happened again!"
Nobody knows the veracity of any of this - the man did like his whiskey.
posted by zoinks at 4:22 PM on July 14, 2008


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