Why are deaths by lightning strike declining?
“Statistically I don’t think anything’s really changed, lightning flash density or anything like that,” Jordan, director of operations at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing, a joint project of the University of Florida and Camp Blanding Florida Army National Guard Base, told Life’s Little Mysteries. “My guess is that it probably has more to do with education than anything else. I think a lot of people are getting the word out (on lightning safety).”
Joseph Dwyer, a physicist at the Florida Institute of Technology who researches lightning, speculates that education on how to deal with lightning strikes once they’ve happened might also contribute to diminishing fatalities.
“Perhaps CPR is more widely taught, so more people survive being struck,” he wrote in an email to Life’s Little Mysteries.
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Kids don’t play outside anymore?
andycanuck on October 9, 2012 at 10:40 PM
Well. THAT article sure offered a lot of nothing.
Warner Todd Huston on October 9, 2012 at 10:40 PM
Global warming?
Kenosha Kid on October 9, 2012 at 10:48 PM
Natural selection.
cozmo on October 9, 2012 at 10:51 PM
andycanuck ya beat me to it.
Badger40 on October 9, 2012 at 10:51 PM
Well, thanks to the liberals for destroying our production-based economy, I guess no one’s really outside working in their steel-toed shoes anymore, are they?
cynccook on October 9, 2012 at 10:52 PM
God is getting old and losing his aim?
SouthernGent on October 9, 2012 at 10:52 PM
No one goes outside anymore?
wildcat72 on October 9, 2012 at 10:53 PM
I blame Bush.
Mimzey on October 9, 2012 at 10:55 PM
Lack of iron in the diet?
Rebar on October 9, 2012 at 10:56 PM
Lightning tends to strike in warm weather, and people don’t have to go outside any more thanks to air conditioning.
Seth Halpern on October 9, 2012 at 10:57 PM
Thor’s hammer is getting rusty
Norwegian on October 9, 2012 at 10:57 PM
Because the phrase,
“If I’m lying, let lightning strike me down”,
has gone out of style?
mrt721 on October 9, 2012 at 11:00 PM
I had a graphics design instructor whose family was prone to dying by lightning strikes, mostly in Florida. Seriously. It would be really funny if it wasn’t true. She was a nervous wreck during thunderstorms.
Maybe, they’re all gone now.
Fallon on October 9, 2012 at 11:03 PM
Lightning doesn’t strike twice. So every bolt of lightning has one one fewer locations to choose from than the one before. You’d think that wouldn’t make that much difference, but over millions of years, it starts to add up.
RINO in Name Only on October 9, 2012 at 11:12 PM
How about this guy, 7 times and he still didn’t die.
Rebar on October 9, 2012 at 11:16 PM
Hundreds of thousands of cell towers acting as lightning rods.
forest on October 9, 2012 at 11:20 PM
1992—Wait for TV weather guy to quit shooting the sh!t with the anchorman and tell you if those thunderstorms are going to hit, grow impatient, give up, go jogging—-ZAP!
2002—Wait for your desktop or laptop to boot up, open web browser, go to favorite weather site, wait for tons of Javascript cr@p and other dancing baloney to load, grow impatient, give up, load Fido in the car and go to the dog park—-ZAP!
2012—Pick up iPhone, slide to unlock, tap on weather app in anticipation of taking a walk through the park to find that food truck your co-workers keep talking about. Weather app loads in seconds, warns about storm. No food truck today. No zap.
Sekhmet on October 9, 2012 at 11:26 PM
That was my guess.
blammm on October 9, 2012 at 11:54 PM
Meh. If somebody needs an IPhone to tell them it’s gonna storm, they deserve a lightning bolt. I’d just stop playing Angry Birds for a minute and look at the sky.
whatcat on October 10, 2012 at 12:56 AM
A whole lot of cube farms out there are pretty hermetically sealed when it comes to feeling the weather, and many companies block the heck out of non-work-related sites. A big advantage of smartphones is their ability to use the wireless service to get on the web, getting around overly-restrictive corporate firewalls.
Sekhmet on October 10, 2012 at 1:47 AM
Finally ! There is an upside to Global Warming !
alQemist on October 10, 2012 at 7:13 AM
Natural selection: people prone to running around in fields carrying metal rods during lightning storms are getting eliminated.
visions on October 10, 2012 at 8:04 AM