Less people are killed by lightning every year

In the 1940s and '50s, lightning strikes killed hundreds of Americans each year. Now, that number's dropped to only a few dozen. What's changed?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain
Stuff is Christian Seger. Across the United States, lightning has
killed fifteen people so far in seventeen. That's according to
National Weather Service data. While those deaths are tragic, that's
fewer than half the thirty eight lightning deaths that the
nation had in sixteen, And we're on track to have

(00:26):
the lowest number of recorded lightning fatalities since nineteen forty
because that's the earliest year for which the federal government
has data. The government actually maintains a year by year
breakdown of deaths from lightning and other weather threats during
that period. But if you look at those historical numbers,
what's most startling is the long term decrease in lightening

(00:49):
deaths over that period. In nineteen forty three, the most
lethal year on record, four hundred and thirty two people
were killed by lightning, and throughout the nineteen forties, and
average of three hundred and twenty nine point three people
died each year. But in the nineteen fifties and the
nineteen sixties the rates started dropping dramatically and steadily kept decreasing,

(01:10):
to the point where over the two thousand tens the
average annual fatality rate is about a tenth of what
it was during the nineteen forties. So why are so
many fewer people being killed by lightning these days than
in the past. Well, one major reason is urbanization. In
nineteen forty, according to the US Census Bureau, forty three

(01:32):
point five per cent of the nation's population lived in
rural areas. By two thousand and ten, that number was
down to nineteen point three percent, with more than eighty
percent of the population living in cities. And today, according
to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average Americans spends
nine of their time indoors, which generally is the safest

(01:56):
place to be during a lightning storm, but that does
mean that you can't be injured or killed by lightning
inside a house. And seven decades ago, not only where
there are more people in rural areas, but they also
spent more of their time working outdoors, where they were
more vulnerable to lightning, as Ronald Holla, and meteorologist who

(02:19):
studies lightning deaths, explained in the Atlantic and farmers in
the nineteen forties still used teams of horses to pull
their plows, and it took them all day to finish
tilling a twenty acre field. Modern farmers, in contrast, are
more likely to be sitting inside a fully enclosed tractor

(02:39):
with a metal housing that offers lightning protection. When people
are killed by lightning these days, it often happens when
they're enjoying some outdoor leisure activity. That's according to a
seventeen analysis of lightning deaths over the past decade by
John S. Jen Senius Jr. He's a eightning safety specialist

(03:01):
with National Weather Service. Jen Senius found that of the
three d and fifty two deaths over the past decade,
thirty three people died while fishing, while twenty were on
the beach, eighteen were camping, in sixteen were boating. When
it came to sports, soccer players accounted for twelve deaths,
while golfers accounted for nine, a piece of information that

(03:24):
shows a golf course isn't necessarily the most dangerous place
during a storm. Farming and ranching, in contrast, accounted for
just seventeen of the recent lightning depths. Today's episode was

(03:44):
written by Patrick J. Kaiger, produced by Tristan McNeil, and
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