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The odds of being hit by lightning each year are only about 1 in 750,000 in the U.S. And yet this rare phenomenon has inspired both fear and fascination for thousands of years. In this groundbreaking, brilliantly researched book, journalist John S. Friedman probes lightning’s scientific, spiritual, and cultural roots. Blending vibrant history with riveting first-hand accounts of those who have clashed with lightning and lived to tell about it, Out of the Blue charts an extraordinary journey across the ages that explores our awe and dread in the face of one of nature’s most fearsome spectacles.
Herman Melville called it “God’s burning finger.” The ancient Romans feared it as the wrath of God. Today we have a more scientific understanding, so why our eternal fascination with lightning? Out of the Blue attempts to understand this towering force of nature, exploring the changing perceptions of lightning from the earliest civilizations through Ben Franklin’s revolutionary experiments to the hair-raising adventures of storm chasers like David Hoadley, who’s been chronicling extreme weather for half a century. And Friedman describes one of the most treacherous rescues ever attempted in American mountain climbing.
Friedman profiles a Virginia ranger who was struck by lightning seven times—and dubbed the human lightning rod—along with scores of others who tell astonishing tales of rescue and survival. And he charts lightning’s profound, life-altering effects on the emotional and spiritual lives of its victims.
Combining captivating fact with thrilling personal stories, Out of the Blue tells a remarkable true tale of fate and coincidence, discovery and divine retribution, science and superstition. As entertaining as it is informative, it is a book for outdoor adventurers, sports enthusiasts, science and weather buffs, nature lovers, and anyone who has ever been awed or frightened by the sight of lightning.
From the Hardcover edition.
- Sales Rank: #1755089 in eBooks
- Published on: 2008-05-20
- Released on: 2008-05-20
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"When you see a TV meteorologist display a map of lightning strikes or see a picture of a lightning bolt, you are unwittingly being introduced to a new era in lightning research. Author John S. Friedman pans through time from ancient myths to scientists who are now delving through the mysteries which have surrounded this awesome and frightening subject. His greatest gift is painting a humanistic picture of a subject which has affected man since he began walking this earth."—Frank Field, TV weatherman
"Who would believe a book on lightning could be not only informative but fascinating reading? Friedman's Out of the Blue is both. He intersperses dozens of human-interest stories along with excellent research. Best of all, he writes as if he's sitting across the campfire and says, "Let me tell you about…"—Cecil Murphey, co-author of the New York Times bestseller, 90 Minutes in Heaven
“Intended for outdoor adventurers, sports enthusiasts, science and weather buffs, nature lovers and anyone who is awed or frightened by lightning…. Fascinating stories.”—Deseret Morning News
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
The Oscar-wining producer of the documentary Hotel Terminus, John S. Friedman has written for the New York Times and contributes regularly to The Nation. The editor of The Secret Histories, he lives in Sharon, Connecticut.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
An Awesome Flame
Everybody's afraid of lightning. Maybe it's built into the genes. It's a primal fear.
—DR. MARTIN UMAN
Lightning descends upon the American landscape in fiery arcs across the Great Plains on lonely summer nights and in brilliant streaks over the Rocky Mountains on lazy afternoons. It's also embedded in our oldest myths.
The stars are the campfires of the dead, and when we die, the great Thunderbird, lightning flashing from its eyes, carries our souls to the Milky Way. According to another Native legend, the Sun, father of twin boys, gave them magic arrows—lightning that strikes crooked and lightning that strikes straight. One day, the twins heard rumbling like the sound of an earthquake. It was the wake of the giant Yeitso3, who had smelled their scent. "How shall I kill them?" the giant wondered. He fired four arrows at the boys, but they missed.
Then the boy named Born of Water shot his own arrow and hit Yeitso. And the boy named Monster Slayer shot his arrow and it killed the giant. Afterward, the twins slayed other monsters with their magical arrows, and they made a huge thunderstorm sweep across the land. When the storm ended, a place called the Grand Canyon existed where once other terrible creatures had lived.
Memories of the indiscriminate power and terrible fascination of lightning have remained with me since childhood. When I rode on horseback in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Northern New Mexico—the ancestral home of the Apaches, the Navajos, and the Pueblo Indians—thunderbolts flashed and crackled around me, and I feared I would never return home. The drama of the never-ending Southwestern sky and its storms—absent in the Northeast, where I have lived most of my life—shaped me in ways I am still exploring.
Ever since, I've wondered about the mysteries of lightning. What causes lightning, and what attracts and repels it? How can we protect against lightning, and when is it most dangerous? Why would one person walking in a field be struck and killed by lightning during a storm while his companion walks away unharmed? What happens physically to someone after being struck?
In his great novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder observes that most "occasions of human woe had never been quite fit for scientific examination. They had lacked what our good savants were later to call proper control." As he ponders the collapse of the Bridge of San Luis Rey, which killed several travelers in eighteenth-century Peru, Wilder's alter ego in the novel, Brother Juniper, collects "thousands of little facts and anecdotes and testimonies" to try to learn "why God had settled upon that person and upon that day for His demonstration of wisdom."
Lightning, too, was most often considered in earlier periods of history to be a pure act of God, beyond scientific explanation. Today, the discoveries of science and medicine have altered our perspectives far beyond Brother Juniper's imaginings.
Still, being struck inevitably raises existential questions about life and death, destiny and divine retribution. What did I do to deserve this? What should I do now? After all, when lightning strikes, there is no human cause. Believing that the testimony of survivors would yield the "thousands of little facts and anecdotes" underlying the human dimension of lightning, I set out on a journey to record their stories. Their accounts reveal a remarkable blend of willful choice and random coincidence, science and superstition. They tell of heroism, pain, hope, and sacrifice. Above all, they tell of their own inspiring spiritual changes.
At least forty-four people were killed by lightning in the United States in 2007. The reported number is lower than the actual number because some deaths due to lightning are not recorded as such. Lightning is the second-leading cause of fatalities in the U.S. related to violent weather. It causes more deaths than earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes. Only floods kill more people. But unlike these other natural disasters, lightning strikes are small, private tragedies, reserved for the unlucky few.
***
Lightning set my underclothes on fire," Roy Sullivan told a rapt audience watching the 1980s TV show That's Incredible! "Now, if you say that's not hot, I'd like to know what hot is."
A longtime ranger in Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Sullivan was born in Greene County, Virginia, on February 7, 1912. He was first hit by lightning in 1942, standing in a park lookout tower. He was lucky. His only injury was the loss of a big toenail. A brawny man with a broad, rugged face, Sullivan, who resembled the actor Gene Hackman, was struck again in 1969 while driving along a mountain road. This time the lightning only singed his eyebrows. But a year later, the outdoorsman was walking across his yard when lightning struck again, searing his left shoulder.
The fourth strike occurred in 1972, while Sullivan was working in a ranger station in Shenandoah National Park. It set his hair on fire, and he had to grab a bucket of water and pour it over his head to extinguish the flames. "I can be standing in a crowd of people, but it'll hit me," he said at the time. "I'm just allergic to lightning."
In 1973, while he was out on patrol in the park, Sullivan saw a storm cloud forming and drove away quickly. But the cloud, he said later, seemed to be following him. When he finally thought he had outrun it, he decided it was safe to leave his truck, but again he was struck. "I actually saw the bolt that hit me," he said. The next strike, the sixth, came in 1974 while he was checking a campsite near the Skyline Drive and left him with an injured ankle.
Then one Saturday morning in 1977, when he was fishing in a freshwater pool, lightning struck Sullivan for the seventh time—hitting the top of his head and traveling down his right side. With his hair singed and burns on his chest and stomach, he hurried to his car. But still he kept his wits about him. He later told a reporter that as he stumbled back down the trail, a bear appeared and tried to steal three trout from his fishing line. But Sullivan had the strength and courage to strike the bear with a branch. He recalled that it was the twenty-second bear he had hit on the head during his lifetime.
Sullivan owns a place in the Guinness World Records, not for the number of times he's decked a bear but for the distinction of being struck by lightning more recorded times than any other human being. Some reports state that he was hit an eighth time in the early 1980s. "Naturally people avoided me," he once recalled. "For instance, I was walking with the chief ranger one day when lightning struck way off. The chief said, 'I'll see you later.' "
On the one hand, Sullivan seemed to attract lightning. (He was dubbed "the human lightning rod" by the media.) On the other hand, he appeared to have some natural physical defense against its effects—despite the number of times he was struck, he wasn't killed or even seriously injured. A member of the Shenandoah Heights Baptist Church, Sullivan had conflicting thoughts about his own fate. He believed that an unseen force was trying to destroy him, and he became convinced after the fourth strike that the next bolt would kill him. Still, he once told a reporter, "I don't believe God is after me. If He were, the first bolt would have been enough."
After supposedly being rejected by the woman he loved, or perhaps from the fear and dread of future strikes, Roy Sullivan shot and killed himself in 1983 at the age of seventy-one. He was living at the time in a town called Dooms.
***
Linda Cooper seems to have it all. She is happily married and lives in an upscale neighborhood of Spartanburg, South Carolina. She has three daughters and three grandchildren. She likes her job as a computer lab supervisor at the local elementary school and generally enjoys life.
And yet, she suffers. Linda Cooper has been hit by lightning four times in her life. No other woman, as far as is known, has been struck as many times. Men account for about four times more lightning fatalities and injuries than women, as men are more likely to engage in agriculture, construction, and recreational outdoor activities.
I am sitting on a bench with Linda Cooper in a hallway of the MainStay Suites in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where a conference for lightning survivors is taking place. She is wearing a tailored red jacket, a blue dress, and a silver necklace. She speaks with a slight Southern accent and is poised and attractive. Complimented that at fifty-seven she looks ten years younger than her age, she replies brightly, "Makeup and curlers do wonders."
Cooper was born in Atlanta in 1950 and grew up in Miami. She was first struck by lightning on September 15, 1983, which had been a typical September day in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida—dismal and gray. It had been raining on and off all morning, and just after one p.m. it started to sprinkle again.
Setting out on a round of errands, Cooper had parked her car in front of the Coral Ridge post office, where she was going to mail a package. When she stepped onto the sidewalk, "it was like a hand grenade going off in my face," she recalls. "All I remember is a blinding white light and the loudest sound I have ever heard or could ever imagine hearing."
The next thing she knew, she was standing up, brushing off her dress, and wondering why she was all wet. Confused and in shock, she walked into the post office. On her way in, she turned and saw a man in his car staring at her. "On his face was a look of horror." They never spoke and he drove away quickly. But to this day, Cooper wonders what he saw.
She went up to the counter to mail her package and told the clerk that she had just been hit by lightni...
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Lightning Strikes: The Human Side
By George Poirier
The author of this book makes a valiant attempt at covering the subject of lightning from most angles: the science, the history of thought about lightning, the superstitions, the damage caused and the effects (both physical and mental) on those who have been struck and have survived. The author has conducted interviews with scientists, physicians and several lightning strike survivors; in fact there is much more on the human side of lightning strikes than anything else. On the positive side, this book is written in a clear, friendly and very engaging way. It is a quick, pleasant and easy read. On the negative side, a few passages on the science contain errors, e.g., p. 103: "... the area of positively charged electrons on the ground ....".. However, the direct quotations from scientists seem accurate. Also, there is one entire chapter on tornado chasers where lightning is hardly mentioned; this chapter may have been more suitable for a book on tornados. Finally, three entire chapters are devoted to the detailed play-by-play rescue of a team of mountain climbers, some of whom were struck by lightning; a few pages, as in the case of the many other amazing survivor stories, would most likely have been sufficient. Notwithstanding these minor quibbles, this is an excellent, indeed thrilling, book that can be enjoyed by absolutely anyone.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A Comprehsnsive Study of Lightning, Especially the Human Aspects
By Jeffrey Beall
Based largely on interviews, this work is a comprehensive study of lightning's human aspects. Friedman, a journalist and documentary film producer, gathers the stories of lightning strike survivors, many of whom are religious and see a divine purpose in their survival. The book also summarizes lightning mythology and folklore, and it recounts the history of lightning science, beginning with Ben Franklin. There are only a few contemporary scientists who study lightning, and they still find some aspects of it puzzling. Much of the book recounts a 2003 helicopter rescue of a mountaineering party struck by lightning atop Wyoming's Grand Teton Mountain, a strike that killed one climber and severely injured several others. Survivors of lightning strikes often have mysterious, long-lasting symptoms that confuse doctors. An organization of lightning strike survivors now exists, and medical science is advancing research on lightning strike victims. Some storm chasers admit they find lightning the most fascinating and feared form of severe weather. Friedman's work is an excellent study of lightning for a popular audience.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Science, Folklore, and Personal Stories of Lightning
By Rob Hardy
There is something pointed about lightning that seems to show purposefulness. We have earthquakes, we have tornadoes, we have many other worrisome planetary characteristics, but lightning seems aimed, it seems to pick off individuals in ways that cry out for a reason such a thing ought to befall them. The pointedness of lightning is one of the themes running through _Out of the Blue - A History of Lightning: Science, Superstition, and Amazing Stories of Survival_ (Delacorte Press) by John S. Friedman. It has a more-or-less historic run of chapters dealing with how we have come to our current understanding of lightning as a natural rather than supernatural phenomenon, intercalated with the story of a dramatic rescue of climbers struck by lighting on a peak of the Teton Range and with many personal stories about what lightning has done to survivors. Don't call them victims. The Lightning Strike and Electric Shock Victims was founded in 1989, but changed those "Victims" to "Survivors", and the organization thrives with 1,500 members each of whom have insights no non-member will ever have. Friedman, a writer who made the Oscar-winning documentary _Hotel Terminus_ twenty years ago, has interviewed many of the survivors whose stories make up the most arresting part of the book.
Lightning not only seems aimed, it is fast, conducting its devastation literally before those it hits knew what hit them. The gods who use lightning in the stories are the ones quick to wrath. When Benjamin Franklin had invented the lightning rod, priests argued against it, saying that they were impious tools to thwart God's will. Though the folklore described here is amusing, the science of lightning is just as well described, although there are still large holes in our understanding. Forked lightning is the most familiar; it happens on Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, too. On Earth, over a billion such flashes happen every year. An average flash is 25,000 feet long and one to six inches in diameter. It heats up the lightning channel to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, far hotter than the surface of the sun. Plenty live to tell about being hit by such bolts; such strikes are only fatal around 10% of the time. We think of lightning coming down and hitting one target, but it can jump around. In Colorado in 2004, lightning hit the clubs of a golfer who was with a group, but then it jumped from one person to another, resulting in injuries to the group of nineteen, no deaths. Tenacious golfers are at risk for lightning injury, leading to the safety slogan "Don't be lame! End the game!" Boy Scouts also seem to be at risk, and the organization has lost some huge lawsuits because it does not have a good safety record. The most peculiar stories here are of the people who get struck repeatedly; lightning not only does strike in the same place, it seems to prefer particular people. These "human lightning rods" are not always forest rangers or otherwise in locales at risk for lightning strikes, they just get hit more often. There may be a medical reason, something different in their body chemistry, but no one has a clue what it might be. As far as anyone knows, if you survive a lightning strike you are safe from future ones; no one who gets hit repeatedly has ever died from subsequent strikes.
Being struck by lightning has definite, but variable, physiological results. The common ideas that someone who is struck will burst into flames or will be instantaneously reduced to ashes are wrong. There can be burns because of the extreme heat, but there are often few external signs of a strike. Even more serious and puzzling are neurological symptoms like memory or attention problems. There are few doctors who ever get to see a lightning strike survivor, and so there are very few specialists. With the pointedness of lightning, it is not surprising that those who are struck and live take lessons from the experience. Over and over in interviews, they tell Friedman things like "God must have a plan for me", and many have had their personal faith increased. No one mentions why such a plan had to include a lightning strike, and it seems that the greatest inspiration that such victims have gotten is to work devotedly for The Lightning Strike and Electric Shock Survivors. The circularity doesn't seem to register; if lightning strikes were a force for human good, we would not need such organizations, nor would we need National Lightning Safety Awareness Week each June, which is sponsored jointly by organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , the Little League, and the PGA Golf Tour. Friedman's book is an appealing combination of meteorological and medical science, combined with the personal stories of those whom lightning has hit, and the gruesome stories of those who did not live to tell the stories themselves.
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