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

it becomes the 1st H&K revolver. Don´t know how they do it.

Mr. afrederick; Please come forward.

St. Peter; You are here to determine if you qualify for admission to heaven. According to your file you died after shooting yourself. Is that true?

Afrederick; No sir.

St. Peter; Well then how did you die?

Afrederick; Well I was walking down the street and it started to rain and lightening, I tried to run across the street for cover but I was hit by lightening before I got across.

St. Peter; So your cause of death should be hit by lightening.

Afrederick Well no sir. You see the lightening bolt only stunned me before it exited out of my front pants pocket and I fell to the ground.

St. Peter; So the lightening only knocked you down?

Afrederick; Well no sir. My gun shooting the toes off my foot did.

St. Peter; Oh this interesting. Just how did you managed to shoot your toes off?

Afrederick ; My gun fired all of its rounds after the lightening hit me.

St. Peter; Gun? Where was this gun?

Afrederick; It was in my front pants pocket where I carry it for protection. When the lightening hit the bullets traveled down to the ground and hit the toes of my foot. I couldn’t run anymore and fell down.

St. Peter; Oh boy this is rich. What happen next?

Afrederick Well I crawled to the street and flagged down a cab.

St. Peter; And the cab driver took you to the hospital?

Afrederick ; Well no. You see he saw that I had been shot he paniced and drove off without me.

St. Peter; This is getting more and more confusing. Lets move on. The report says you also broke you other foot. I suppose the lightening broke it?

Afrederick; Well you see. The cab driver ran over it when he paniced.

St. Peter; Let me get this right. The lightening caused your gun to shoot yourself in one foot and the cab driver ran over your other foot?

Afrederick; Yes sir.

St. Peter; This is the best story I have heard in five centuries. What happened next?

Afrederick Well I crawled to into the street for help and got hit by a bus.

St. Peter; Bus? What bus accident.

Afrederick Yes Sir it is right there. The part about the concussion. I convinced the bus driver to drive me to the nearest hospital before I bled to death on his bus.

St. Peter; So he took you to the emergency room?

Afrederick; Well not exactly. The hospital street was on 13th street and his route took 12th street.

St. Peter; How did you get to the hospital?

Afrederick; Well two winos took me to it after I gave them my iPhone and ATM card.

St. Peter; What happened when you got to the hospital?

Afrederick; Well they refused to admit me because I was out of my HMO approved provider list and I didn’t have the cash to pay for emergency room fee.

St. Peter; Why didn’t you have the money? Didn’t they have a ATM nearby?

Afrederick; Well yes sir but you see I gave my ATM card to the winos that brought me to the hospital. So the hospital refused to treat me and I was sitting on the curb wondering what else could co wrong. I said outloud ”Lord why didn’t you just let that bus kill me?’ and then the 13th street bus ran over and killed me.

St. Peter; What type of gun were you carrying?

Afrederick; A Smith & Wesson revolver.

St. Peter; Did you have the lock on?

Afrederick; No Sir.

St. Peter; Case settled. I have sending you straight to hell until it is determined in court if your death was caused by not having the lock on or by defective ammunition.

Allegedly according to a news story a loose round in a woman's purse was detonated in public by accidental contact of primer and case with a 9-volt battery. So it is conceivable that lightning could discharge a firearm. Something I don't want to test even with a 9 volt battery: I got eye and hearing protection but have not (yet) got myself any chain mesh autopsy gloves for hand protection.

Still, a good premise for a Mythbusters episode ("Is that a pistol in your pocket and you've just been struck by lightning?")

In my completely layman opinion, if you were struck by lightning, the electricity would probably travel through your body to ground and probably would not affect the primers or powder in a pistol at all. In other words, if you are struck by lightning, you got enought to worry about there, without worrying about your pistol going off. Others have made this point too.

Cap'n'ball revolvers with a chainfire of all chambers have held together and did not shoot the front half of the gun off the frame, and did not handgrenade either. I would expect a modern J-frame .38 revolver to hold together with a sumultaneous discharge of all five chambers: if the five cartridges in the cylinder fired due to lightning, one bullet would exit the barrel in the normal manner, the bullets in the chambers on either side would exit the chambers with less velocity, the bullets in the bottom chambers (at least on my Rossi J-frame clone) would probably be deflected off the front of the frame but still exit the chambers.

My best friend's step-dad was struck by lightning back in the early '80s. He was a cop and had a .38 Spcl on him when it happened. The umbrella he was carrying was toasted (literally) but he walked away with some burns, dazed, and confused. Nothing happend to the S&W. Of course I'm assuming this wasn't a direct strike but it was close enough for him.

what a lightning strike was like.

for those who are interested. I saw the bright flash ( i think I did, It's kinda hard to tell what was real and what I imagined when it happened.) I remember lying in the garden and feeling the rain. I knew my back was on fire. I could feel and smell my skin burning,I'm pretty sure I could even taste it. I could hear my family inside the barn talking and putting away tools since it was raining. I thought that I was calling for help. I could not move any part of my body. My wife finally came out and found me. I was unresponsive and limp. She thought I was dead. I was aware in my mind but couldn't move. She dragged my inside. Amazing how strong that little woman can be. After some amount of time I slowly regained movement and speech,I don't have a good sense of how long probably 5 minutes. I hurt all over even the muscles in your ears that you didn't know you had. I was not burned as I thought but I was very red up my left arm across the left side of my back and down my left leg. The red areas looked like sunburn under a mesh shirt. Like a netting. Took several days before I could walk well enough to leave the house.

Lightning does things to your brain. Rewires it somehow. I was always left handed before and now shoot pistols right handed.I'm not completely right handed now but almost.There is some problems with short term memory now. Can't do math very well. I lose time when I'm doing the simplest tasks. Can't really get angry now even if I try. I can remember places I have been like a hunting spot but have no idea how to get there. Some information was lost.

I didn't get a direct shot. I never want to experience what a direct jolt would be like.

Two extremes: Brother in law struck and brought back to life by a fireman who was with him at the time. Key touching truck melted in hand. Time in ER to restore electrolytes. A friend struck while stringing fence. Knocked off his feet, came in and mixed himself a martini at ten in the morning.

The lightning would enter the top of your head and fry your brain (literally). You would not have to worry about what happened or didn't happen as the lightning traveled further down your body toward the ground. (I'm completely serious.)

Electricity fires primers by heating them as the current flows through the resistive primer material. Thus, one can fire a cartridge by running a current through the primer and out through the case (a 9V battery can do this, a standard D cell can't).

To fire a cartridge in one's pocket when hit by lightning the lightning would have to have a solid path to ground through the cartridge's primer and then out through the brass case to a very low resistance path to ground. The lightning's plasma may well provide such a path. So I'll stipulate that it is possible to fire a cartridge in one's pocket when hit by lightning.

The lightning would enter the top of your head and fry your brain (literally). You would not have to worry about what happened

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It is odd to me that we still have members chiming in to say that you will simply die of the lighting strike so the gun question is moot, when others have posted that the vast majority of strike victims survive and we have three strike victims (who seem to have survived, if their posting here today is a compelling indication of such things) posting in this very thread!

(And another three family member/personal friend anecdotes of the same.)

Bizzare.

Can see it now,

Mae West: Is that a lightning ROD in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me ?

This is from two weeks ago, cherry tree chunk popped out from top to bottom

This is why the gun of the future will be rubber.

The Glock is impressive as it is able to bypass metal detectors.....but the future gun will be able to defeat metal detectors and lightning.

icanthitabarn said:

This is from two weeks ago, cherry tree chunk popped out from top to bottom

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That is from the sap and moisture evaporating and expanding so fast that it splits the wood. Impressive.

allaroundhunter said:

The Glock is impressive as it is able to bypass metal detectors.....

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Ummm... not that impressive as it doesn't bypass metal detectors at all. It is a myth.

I was always told to get of the hill when I was a kid with a rifle, probably not because it would blow up but because I was the highest metal thing around. Personally I think i'd rather be shot than fried anyway.

Just get out of the lightening.

Looks like this has run its course.