Ars Technica writer Jason Marlin describes a recent hair-raising experience:
I was getting ready to dive back into work when the storm really picked up. “Ahhhh,” I thought as I leaned back in my chair to stare out at the strange greenish light against a purple-clouded backdrop. “So beautiful!” At that moment—and this part is a little foggy—a bright arc of electricity shot through the window and directly into my chest. I’m not sure whether the arc originated from the sky or the ground, but it knocked me out of my chair. I hit the concrete floor and bounced back up to my feet, which were shuffling at top speed into a bookshelf. I remember thinking, “OK, going to die now. Do not fall down. Do not pass out.”
Luckily, other than some next-day soreness, Marlin was fine. He wonders about the EMT’s question about whether he was wearing shoes, which he wasn’t:
It turns out there’s something of an obsession with shoes and lightning, the predominant belief being that rubber soles offer some insulating protection against the current. But as Kyle Hill writes in a blog post, “If lightning has burned its way through a mile or more of air (which is a superb insulator), it is hardly logical to believe that a few millimeters of any insulating material will be protective… I tend to believe that there would be little effect from whatever is on the bottom of your feet.”
The Dish 