Being struck by lightning - advice needed

[Queen of Swords]

If your name is GunnerJ, please don't read this. It contains massive spoilers. Press the "back" button, now.

For everyone else...

Let's assume that one person, A, is about forty or fifty feet off the ground, with a long wire attached to one leg. The end of the wire is connected to the head of a person, B, standing on the ground. This is during a thunderstorm.

If A is struck by lightning, will B be electrocuted? Will A be seriously injured as well? Moreover, if either of them is electrocuted, will their injuries be horrific - i.e. scorched body parts flying in every direction, or will it be more like just toppling over and hitting the ground? I can work with either one of these, but I'll go with the most realistic.

And yes, this is for a book. We don't even have storms in Dubai, even if I wanted to try this out, which I don't.

[Oregon Slim]

Lightning is very difficult to predict.

Electrocution is typically caused by having a fatal current travel through your heart. The odd thing is that there is a certain range of currents that is fatal, but currents in excess of some amount are usually not fatal. Whether that applies to both AC (household electriic mains) and DC (lightning), I'm not sure. It might be just AC, because AC wants more than DC to travel near the skin or surface of a conductor and miss the heart. Some people survive lightning strikes, perhaps because the current is too high to dissrupt their heartbeat. It is also said that if you are about to be struck by lightning, you should put your knees on the ground and your hands on your knees, so that the current will go through your arms and miss your heart.

Lightning finds the lowest-resistance electrical path beween atmospheric electricity and ground. In the arrangement you describe, we can guess that it will travel down the wire and strike person B, but if person B is wearing insulating shoes, or standing on some insulating material, or if there is some other good source of a ground nearby, the current's path might go sideways at any point to find it. This is how people are killed in homes by lightning: The current travels through the upper part of the house on one conductor that is relatively exposed up high, perhaps an electric wire or an antenna, and jumps sideways through the house and through the person to find another conductor connected to the ground, perhaps plumbing (pre-plastic pipe) or a telephone wire that carries a ground.

[Loren Pechtel]

The bolt will take the path of least resistance. Barring odd conditions that will be through A, through the wire and through B. Note, though, it's the path of least resistance, not the straightest path.

If what B is standing on is insulated and there's something conductive nearby the bolt might go out an arm instead--and if it doesn't go through the heart there's no electrocution. (You can still be fried, though.)

[Tetlepanquetzatzin]

Originally posted by QueenofSwords
Let's assume that one person, A, is about forty or fifty feet off the ground, with a long wire attached to one leg. The end of the wire is connected to the head of a person, B, standing on the ground. This is during a thunderstorm.

If A is struck by lightning, will B be electrocuted? Will A be seriously injured as well? Moreover, if either of them is electrocuted, will their injuries be horrific - i.e. scorched body parts flying in every direction, or will it be more like just toppling over and hitting the ground? I can work with either one of these, but I'll go with the most realistic.
The wire will probably melt due to the large amounts of heat that is released. Aside from the obvious burn injuries I do not know what kind of injuries a human is probable to sustain from lightning. Perhaps The Lancet 360(9330):354 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(02)09604-6) and references therein is a good place to start a literature survey.

[Hyndis]

I think the most common thing that happens if someone is struck by lightning is that they are simply knocked over. Their clothes are often usually blown off or melted, due to the massive current of the bolt, although people who end up naked are also usually dead.

In Florida, paramedics are often recieve calls of naked dead people lying on the ground with some burns. And Flordia is one of the most active areas in the world for lightning storms...

[Jet Black]

well they are connected in series, so they both feel it. we did an experiment at school where one person charges themselves up on a van de graff generator and then you grab the first hand in a chain of linked people, the end one connected to a ground just to make sure it works ok, and everyone feels a shock from it.

For some reason I pick up huge amounts of static quite easily (I'm always shocking people), so I was the person on the VDG.

[Undercurrent]

I just wanted to point out the funny title of this thread, and remind everyone that if you're actually in the middle of being struck by lightning, you should seek advice from a competent medical professional, not an internet message board. :)

[GunnerJ]

If your name is GunnerJ, please don't read this. It contains massive spoilers. Press the "back" button, now.

Will do. But get on that goddamn .50! (i.e., PLS SEND LAST CHAPTER SOON!)

[Demosthenes]

any chance you're gonna post the book on II?

[GunnerJ]

Although I have to ask, based solely on the title, if this is about the ending of Remel or Before the Storm.

[Queen of Swords]

Originally posted by GunnerJ
Although I have to ask, based solely on the title, if this is about the ending of Remel or Before the Storm.

What the holy hell are you doing here? ;)

Anyway, if you really want an answer, what worked spectacularly in the first book through accident is carefully set up to work in the second book... and then it doesn't give the desired effect, leading to much disappointment for the characters. Well, except the ones who get hit by lightning; they're too dead to care.

In other words, I'm going with Hyndis's suggestion of them simply being knocked over. The person who actually connects the wire wants a pyrotechnic explosion, but he gets more of a wet squib.

Edited to add : I'm 2/3 of the way through the last chapter. One more big battle scene, and then the aftermath/wrapping-up/romance.

[Queen of Swords]

Originally posted by Demosthenes
any chance you're gonna post the book on II?

I'm afraid I can't do that, since it's a sequel to an earlier novel, which I want to get published. Posting the book on the Internet means that no publisher will ever pay for it.

The book is a fantasy novel, but without magic per se and set in a pre-industrial land where I distort/speed up evolution to produce sub-species of humanoids with various traits and abilities, some of which are what pass for magic. Think Star Trek, but with far more pronounced biological and social differences between races.

[Jackalope]

Okay, I finally found the pages I was thinking of.

Lightning Facts (http://www.uic.edu/labs/lightninginjury/ltnfacts.htm)
Lightning Strike and Electrical Shock Survivors International (http://www.lightning-strike.org/)
Struck By Lightning, Survivor's Stories (http://www.struckbylightning.org/)
eMedicine's article on Lightning injuries (http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic2796.htm)

It is a myth that someone's clothes get blown off during a lightning strike. Clothes can burn or, if they're synthetic fibre, melt but they won't explode off the victim.