Getting struck by lightning is extremely rare, but can cause severe injury and death. Approximately 90% of people struck by lightning survive, but the experience and after-effects vary greatly depending on the extent of the strike. Here’s an overview of what happens when lightning strikes you, the possible injuries, and survival outcomes.
Immediate Effects of Being Struck
When lightning hits a person directly, the massive electrical current passes through the body, going in through one part of the body and exiting out another. This causes various immediate effects:
- Loss of consciousness – The electrical shock can cause immediate loss of consciousness and collapse. About three quarters of lightning strike victims report an immediate loss of consciousness.
- Cardiac arrest – The electrical current can cause the heart to stop beating immediately. Some cases result in ventricular fibrillation, where the heart beats chaotically and ineffectively.
- Respiratory arrest – The electrical shock can paralyze nerve impulses to the diaphragm and lungs, causing breathing to stop.
- Severe burns – Lightning burns often occur at the point where the current entered and exited the body, but internal burns can also result, as the current travels through the nerves and blood vessels.
The combined effect of cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, and severe burns places victims in immediate life-threatening danger. Immediate CPR and defibrillation (to restore normal heart rhythms) are required to sustain life.
Long-Term Physical Effects
For those that survive a direct lightning strike, there are numerous long-term physical effects that may persist for life:
- Nerve damage – The massive electrical current can burn and scar the nerves and nervous system. This can result in permanent paralysis, seizures, speech or memory problems, and other ongoing neural effects.
- Brain damage – Electrical shock to the brain can damage the brain cells and structures. This can impair cognitive, motor, and sensory functions.
- Spinal cord injuries – A lightning current that travels along the spine can cause temporary or permanent spinal cord injury, resulting in paralysis of the lower body.
- Chronic pain – Nerve damage and burns from the lightning strike can cause persistent neuropathic pain.
- Vision and hearing loss – The heat, light, pressure wave, and/or electrical charge can damage the eyes and ears.
- Muscle and tissue damage – In addition to burns, the current can cause severe muscle and tissue damage along the length of the strike.
- Vascular damage – Blood vessels can be damaged and blocked by lightning current, causing ongoing circulatory problems.
Survivors of severe lightning strikes often require extensive rehabilitation to treat the wide-ranging physical after-effects.
Psychological Symptoms
Beyond the physical trauma, lightning strike victims often suffer psychological effects:
- Post-traumatic stress disorder – Many survivors experience PTSD symptoms such as hypervigilance, anxiety, insomnia, flashbacks and nightmares of the traumatic event.
- Depression – Dealing with chronic pain, disability, loss of function, and post-traumatic stress can lead to depressive disorders.
- Personality changes – Severe current to the brain can cause personality changes, such as increased irritability and moodiness.
- Difficulty concentrating and memory problems – Cognitive symptoms are common due to current passed through the brain.
- Survivor’s guilt – Some survivors experience guilt over surviving a deadly situation when others did not survive.
Therapy, medication, and other psychological treatment is often needed to help overcome the emotional trauma of a lightning strike.
Factors Affecting Lightning Survival
There are several key factors that influence an individual’s chance of survival and extent of long-term effects from a direct lightning strike:
- Proximity – The closer the strike, the greater the intensity of the shock, burns, and damage. Direct contact has the highest lethality.
- Duration – The longer lightning remains in contact with the person, the greater the sustained shock.
- Amplitude – More intense lightning current causes more severe effects and higher mortality.
- Pathway – The path the current takes through the body impacts which areas sustain damage.
- Fast intervention – Immediate CPR and medical care greatly improves survival odds.
- Multiple strikes – Subsequent strikes increase lethality if the person remains in the storm.
Younger, healthier individuals have better overall survival odds and resiliency after lightning strikes. But there are many case reports of children and adults surviving severe strikes with a mix of disabling injuries and remarkably few permanent effects.
Odds of Being Struck by Lightning
Your lifetime odds of being struck by lightning in the United States are about 1 in 15,300. This makes lightning strikes exceedingly rare events for any single individual.
About 420 people are struck by lightning in the US each year, based on data from 2006 to 2020. Of those:
- 90% survive
- 9% die
- 1% experience life-threatening injuries with permanent disability
Men account for about 80% of lightning casualties, likely because they tend to have more outdoor exposure in work and leisure activities. July is the peak month for lightning strikes. Florida, Texas, Colorado, North Carolina, New York, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Alabama, and Tennessee see the highest number of lightning fatalities.
Conclusion
Lightning can cause immediate cardiac arrest, seizures, and respiratory failure, requiring emergent resuscitation and treatment for survival. For those that survive, severe nerve, tissue and thermal damage often cause lasting physical impairment and psychological trauma. Yet the majority of lighting strike victims can survive with proper medical care – and a subset experience minimal permanent effects, almost miraculously. Remaining vigilant about weather conditions and taking appropriate precautions can minimize the odds of becoming one of the very rare instances of being struck by lightning.