What 100 Million Volts Do to the Body and Mind

For The Atlantic, Jacob Stern attends a conference of Lightning Strike and Electrical Shock Survivors International, to learn what life is like for those who have been struck by lightning. (Some conference goers have been struck multiple times.) Attendees are there primarily to connect with one another, to find community in an experience so rare, there’s only a one in 1.2 million chance of it happening to any given person.

Many of the body’s essential systems—the heart, the brain, the nervous system—depend on electrical signals, and lightning can throw these thoroughly out of whack. Forgetfulness, sleep problems, sexual dysfunction, and headaches that manifest as intense pressure—like “my eyeballs are just popping out,” one person told me—are common. Some people become hypersensitive to noise; others lose their hearing entirely. A few, almost miraculously, are freed of a prior ailment: a bad leg healed; vision, once impaired, restored. Pretty much all of them feel permanently off balance. Some have to relearn simple things, things they’ve done their whole life—how to read, how to sing, how to ride a bike.