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Lightening strikes man in Scrotum

My day was much better than his....

Gee Carl, I wonder if we'll soon hear another report from Spain that this lightning strike has turned this guy into a new Superhero???

(...uh huh..."Zipper Man", who's fly...err, I mean who can fly and piss fire at supervillains at the same time!!!)

It's only funny because it wasn't me

We went sailing in the Straits of Florida. The weather turned sour and we started back. I decided to go under power as I'd sent everyone below and only wanted to deal with the tiller. Lightning was popping all about. I was resting my hand on the boom with the other on the tiller.

I never saw a lightning strike but the air obviously discharged into the mast, through the boom, and then to me.

Since my wife and little kids were below all I could do was shake it off and grab the tiller again.

It certainly wasn't much of a hit (I was a paramedic and I saw two lightning fatalities. Nasty.) but I wouldn't want to do it again.

I can't help wondering why it struck him in the balls and not higher up? Unless he is the same guy that was in the news for suing BMW and Corbin seats! ... Maybe that was the highest point.

I worked a call once where a guy went into a shelter around a fishing pond. Lightning struck the tree next to it, ran down until it intersected with the cable providing electricity to the shelter, flowed through the line to the bare light hanging above his head, arched through him, and exited out the bottom of his feet.

Dead right there. His feet were smoldering.

Lightning basically cooks whatever it uses as a conductor in your body.

Yikes! One time I was backing a backhoe tractor off a flatbed trailer during a lightning storm, a nearby strike made me all "tingly" for awhile. Another time in the mountains east of cedar city it, 4 of us were saddling up next to a steel panel round pen. Lighting struck a scrub oak on the opposite side. At that instant I watched a bolt jump about 2 feet out of a panel, striking the guy next to me square in the sternum. He had a small bruise,and took the day off. The panel looked like someone touched a welding rod to it. Neither event involved a sailboat tiller, but it might have?

lightning is some powerful stuff. Years ago, out in the boat with a GF and another couple. GF had long, long hair and as we headed in ahead of a storm, her hair started lifting up and fanning out around her head. I headed under a nearby bridge and no sooner had tied up to a piling when it struck and hit a young boy fishing above. In the shoulder and out the foot. He didn't make it.

many years back, I had a farming relative in MN hit by lighting while he was in the field. Tractor took most of the hit. The next time a storm came up, he dashed to a nearby metal shed. Lightning hit the shed. A year later, he was in the same shed seeking protection from a storm and lightning hit again. His luck ran out that time.

I've had some tingly close calls at outdoor shows, you know...the kind where the promoter(s) won't call it because they're afraid to risk their investment...like Indy. In a way my job is trouping truck loads of lightning rods from town to town. The one thing that always stands out in my memory is the smell of ozone in the air; just like Christmas morning and the first time that Lionel went around the tracks. I can't begin to tell you how lucky I am that "tingly" is the worst I've ever encountered.

It does worry me sometimes when I ride to work and, on the way home, there is an unexpected thunderstorm. There are places where I'm the tallest object for 1/2 mile or more.

I once spent about 45 miserable minutes crouching in a roadside ditch with a small tarp over my head while a lighning storm passed by. Nothing in sight but me. I never reconciled whether staying low was better or worse than standing in a couple inches of flowing water.