He doesn't work on the railroad as a conductor does he?
Bloke called Rod struck by lightning for second time
A man called Rod has an unfortunately apt name, having now been struck by lightning twice. Rod Wolfe, 58, lives in Chebanse, a small town outside of Chicago in the United States. Last Saturday, he was standing just outside his house when lightning hit a nearby tree and jumped to his body. He was treated for broken ribs and …
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Saturday 27th June 2015 06:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: re how many are called Rod
But it makes you wonder what roughly 41'000 Americans were thinking when naming their child.
Probably what a fine name Rodney or Roderick is, much better than those old-fashioned names like Frederick or Franklin, and so well suited to an exciting period of change like the late '50s. Fast forward 60 years and parents want their kids to have fresh and original names like Jackson or Noah. Fashion, huh?
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Saturday 27th June 2015 07:25 GMT Chris Miller
The '30 Americans' estimate would be correct if they all had an equal (1 in 3,000) chance. But the odds aren't equally distributed. Certainly in the UK, your annual chance of being struck by lightning must be a lot less than 1 in 700,000 - otherwise it would happen to nearly 100 people every year, whereas only 3 people annually are killed by lightning in the UK. I expect the disparity between states is equally great.
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Sunday 28th June 2015 00:44 GMT John Brown (no body)
"a lot less than 1 in 700,000 - otherwise it would happen to nearly 100 people every year, whereas only 3 people annually are killed by lightning in the UK"
According to the article only 10% of lightening strike victims die, so means there's probably 30 per year i the UK. But that doesn't change the point of your comment by much in that most people live in cities and large towns so a less likely to be hit. I'd expect people lining and working in rural areas have the highest chances of being struck.
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Saturday 27th June 2015 11:56 GMT harmjschoonhoven
Re: What I want to know is...
Knocked down by a bus? The chance to get a fatal road accident on the way to buy a lottery ticket can be 16 times higher than the chance to win the jackpot.
This case was described in Scientific American. People from New York had to buy the lottery tickets in New Jersey.
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Sunday 28th June 2015 07:35 GMT Shane McCarrick
Stats
So- if a person has a 1-in-3000 chance of being struck by lightening in their lifetime- their chance of being struck twice is 1-in-9 million- which to me sounds plausible.
As to a random chance of getting hit by lightening of 1-in-700,000 in any given year- if anything it seems pretty high to me.
As for who is maintaining statistics on lightening prone humans- I don't know....... My two younger sisters have been A&E doctors in their time (they both did the GP conversion course as the hours were too nutty in A&E). They both say they don't list Lightening strikes among their injury sources in their report software. So- its entirely possible there may be large cohorts of strikees out there- who have never had their unfortunate affinity for lightening recorded in official channels.
Unless- of course someone somewhere has worked out how to ascribe injuries to lightening- I guess the typical injuries would be a giveaway.
For bonus points- if there is a 10% chance of a lightening strike killing any given person- but a lightening strike messes up your heart and your electrical stimuli to the heart such that a second strike has a 95% chance of killing you- how likely would Rod be to survive the second lightening strike- if he was hit while playing golf with an AED within 4 minutes of his strike position- but his golfing partner not having the number of the clubhouse on speed dial on his phone...........
Sunday mornings need decent crosswords. I haven't bought the papers yet.
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Monday 29th June 2015 14:38 GMT David_H
Are you supposed to report being hit?
I got hit coming out of a cave once (caves emit streams of negative ions). It hit the aluminium ladder clipped to my belt and ran down the wetsuit seam and over the rubber boot to ground. It was hammering with rain and the route it took would have been very wet. However, it burn through the seam and into my leg a little and I was deaf in the ear on that side for a few months.
Less than a year later I was unplugging my parents TV aerial when it was hit, so it was only an indirect hit on me this time. I was crouched down at the time and suffered torn leg muscles as they all spasmed at the same time.
I never reported it to the authorities - I didn't know that I should - should I ?
Between the first and second times I was studying electronics and I was particularly efficient at letting the smoke out of CMOS logic chips :-(
BTW I've also broken at least one of most types of bones in the body, including my neck twice. My wife does call me "Disaster Area" for some reason!
Anonymous because I don't want the insurance to find out how lucky I am!