Can an aeroplane get stricken by lightning? And Why?

When you get struck by lightning, do you shake?

• I heard That because our brains send orders to our limbs and organs with electronic signals, when we get struck by lightning, do we go into spasm because the lightning overloads the ...show more

• Answer:

  When paramedics use a heart defibrillator, they have two paddles as the electricity is to go between the two. I have an implanted cardiac defibrillator after a cardiac arrest, five years ago, and two wires are going from my breast to my heart. And yes, a heart defibrillator shakes you! But, as far as I know, if struck by lightning, the electricity is going outside your body, along your skin. In my case, it would certainly trigger my defibrillator, as even security check at the airport would, but for normal people, I don't think it should do very much to the heart. What you will certainly suffer from is, skin burns and, indeed, your feet will suffer from it, but perhaps not bleeding. How the lightning bolt affects us is difficult to predict. Some 300 people get struck by the lightning, each year, in the USA but it is fatal for only 60 of them, on the average. Someone even managed to survive the bolt without any physical damages, only to find coins in his pocket melted together! Regarding the general danger of electricity, as a radio amateur, I learned that our skin makes a resistance to the flow of electricity and that causes a heating to the point that, at the point of entry, the skin burns and as it turns into carbon, it facilitates the flow of electricity. Another point is that, home supply of electricity is alternative current and that is bad news for the sinus generator of our heart since the AC frequency is close to that of our heart. A radio amateur rule for working with life electricity is to keep one hand in our pocket because the danger comes from the electricity going from one hand to the other, through our breast and heart.