What happens if you are struck by lightning with a .38 snubnose in your pocket?

Had a local cop who got struck by lightning and survived. He was in his front yard at the time. He did survive.

Anyway, what Devonai said: You are just a nice, saline, juicy pathway to ground (earth for our Brit friends), so, unless, as Devonai said, the lightning hits the gun directly, your chances for it going off are virtually nil.

I think that revolver would be the least of your troubles...

Try not to do this.


mark

I'll agree that there is a chance the gun might be heated to the point of cooking off the rounds. But I'm thinking that it's unlikely.

If YOU are the path to ground that the lightning takes it seems unlikely that the lighting will find that a shorter/easier path exists by jumping to a gun sitting in a holster on your belt and then jumping back to you. If your gun was grounded to earth that would be totally different, but it isn't. If the lightning hits you it will most probably continue through some path within you and then leap to ground near your feet (probably just above your boots).

Taken to extremes, if you were holding a rifle, with the butt on the ground, your hand on the muzzle, and your knee resting against the bolt handle, I'd believe that the steel barrel and action would be part of the least-resistance path to ground. But a small handgun hung on your belt, swathed in a decent insulator (like leather or kydex) is really not going to be an attractive route. Certainly not a lower-resistance path than your sweaty, salty body which is actually touching the ground.

Now, depending on exactly what path the current took through you, it may be possible that the gun would be super-heated anyway and might cook off, but I don't think there'd be a great likelihood of it.

Interesting factoid-I have an ancestor who was struck and killed while riding on a hay wagon 2 miles from where I was stuck. About a 100 years apart on the same road.

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Ummmm, you should realy think about moving.

So if you had a Glock in your pocket would it just melt and the bullets would fall out?

Pure speculation here, but I agree that you'd most likely die.

As for the snubbie, It would most definitely turn into a TASER.

ApacheCoTodd is a funny guy.

T'sall I know.

You'd develop a mild stutter.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhAzLlSZFcc

I have read about it and it is not really likely to kill you but it hurts like heck. One man was hit by lightening about 7 or 8 times and lived through it all.

greywolf444 said:

I have been struck. About 10 years ago. Its nothing like being shocked. I was holding a catspaw bar and it got spot welded to the side of the barn. I suppose that the heat might light off a few or all of the rounds. That will be the least of your worries. A strike does things to you right now and other things you find out about later. You will most likely survive. There is no way to predict what it will do to you from not much to way too much. I am not the same man as I was before it happened but I survive. just different now.

Use some sense and get in shelter when lightning is around. This is Mother Nature's mean side and she can be a cruel bitch.

Interesting factoid-I have an ancestor who was struck and killed while riding on a hay wagon 2 miles from where I was stuck. About a 100 years apart on the same road.

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I'd be curious to hear how it changed you if you're bored enough to go into it some time. This is kinda fascinating.

rcmodel said:

Maybe so.

Of my own personal acquaintances who were hit by lightening in my 68 years?

Seven people I knew very well got hit by lightening.
One plowing on a tractor, one fishing near a farm pond, and five solders at Ft. Jackson South Carolina during field training.

All were killed instantly.

Thats more like 100% DRT in my own circle of friends.

Maybe the other 90% / 49 people I know that got hit by lightening didn't tell me??

rc

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1) Lightning kills 1 in 10 struck approximately. So 90% do survive. Now this is not distinguishing DIRECT or INDIRECT strikes. But here is the statistic from the lightning safety research.

http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm

2) Electrical conduction CAN set off a round. Remember the Remington Entrox? There was that mythbusters show where they were able to fire off rounds using a simple electrical current from a car battery.

3)Will it go off in a lightning strike? I think that depends and there is no clear answer. Depends what course the current takes.

time to conduct an experiment

anyone have Old Fuff's cell #?



(think of the trigger guards that can be saved)

Shame you didn't have a Kahr in your pocket, then this post would fall in the Autoloaders section. Those guys know everything.

1. The lightening would kill you, so there is no need to worry about the gun.

2. The all metal .38 Spl revolver is a perfect conductor / Faraday cage / heat sink for the ammo.

3. So somebody would have to unload your loaded gun before they cart off your body to the morgue for the autopsy.

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4. Before your body got hot enough to set off your ammo, it would be hot enough to turn all your body fluids into super-heated steam.

Dain Bramage said:

Shame you didn't have a Kahr in your pocket, then this post would fall in the Autoloaders section. Those guys know everything.

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Nah... We wouldn't want that can o' worms opened over there. Before you knew it we'd be hearing all about how the mighty Glock deflects bolts of lightning, no, wait... that would be 1911s - or maybe CZ? Who knows, one thing that would be fairly agreed upon would be that Tauruseses, er, Tauri would not only attract the lightning but lead to much CS frustration.

What happens if you are struck by lightning with a .38 snubnose in your pocket?

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You usually are killed by the lightning! The electricity goes through the path of least resistance and while it can melt the gun or maybe fire it, it is more likely to just go through you into the ground (and kill you.)

But sometimes you get hit twice...

http://www.killsometime.com/videos/7052/Lightning-Strikes-Man-Twice

Deaf

I was hit and died. I'm a zombie. No, I lived. No gun at the time.

However, I think after the hit, the gun would shoot lightning like the Tesla guns on Warehouse 13.

As a side note, I've mentioned before - I have a friend who survived a DC-8 crash in the suburbs the killed those in the front of the plane. He lived.

We were in a clash and the instructor said that some event was as rare as being hit by lightning or being in a plane clash. We broke up and raised our hands.

Years later, I took my daughter to the spot where I got hit when we in that town.

Off hand, I don't think I have seen a sillier post. But there is a lot of competition these days.

Jim

I don't think I have seen a sillier post

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handloading for zombies was a good one

To the Myth Busters forums!

Roman Candle You may live and then again you may not, but the Roman Candle effect could be your demise.

I been standing outside in every storm that came thru since this thread started. Just so I could try to answer this with some expertese. All I got so far is wet !

My guess is your fillings would melt , smoke would come out your ears, and you would no longer care about the question . But so far, that's just a guess.

I am one of two members of my immediate family that have been struck by lightning (ground contact) and lived. There will be blinding white light, and a sound like the Almighty finally got fed up enough to tear the world in half. It does not hurt. You will come to (if you come to) not remembering, at first, what just happened and wondering why everyone is all panicky and screaming and stuff. You may (as I did) experience temporary loss of hearing or other sensory input. You know that really, really sore feeling you get in a particular muscle group if you overworked it at the gym the day before? THAT... in every muscle of your body, for a couple days at least. You will realize later that every metal object in contact with your body was at one point hot enough to cause second-degree burns. This does lead me to think the rounds in your gun might cook off. Avoid this.

Primers are designed to ignite when struck sharply, a lightning strike doesn't do that. I highly doubt the rounds would fire but then again, I have no first hand experience. (thank God!)

OH OH, I know... The J frame turns into a Ray-Gun!!

I was struck back in '99 while playing volleyball. Not something I would ever want to relive. I would say that the chances of me getting struck again with a .38 in my pocket are zero for two reasons.

1) I usually carry an LCP.

2) I no longer go outside in lightning! (I seriously am deathly afraid of lightning now.)