When lightning strikes near you, your body can be injured even without a direct hit. The shockwave alone can rupture eardrums, fracture bones, and damage internal organs. About 90% of lightning strike victims survive, but the injuries range from temporary paralysis to cardiac arrest, cataracts that develop months later, and strange fern-like patterns on the skin that appear and vanish within hours.
Most people picture lightning as something that either hits you or misses you. The reality is more complicated. Lightning injures people in several ways, and a strike that lands nearby, on a tree or the ground beside you, can be just as dangerous as one that connects directly.
How a Nearby Strike Can Still Hit You
Lightning doesn’t have to strike your body directly to send current through it. One of the most common injury mechanisms is called a side flash: the bolt hits a nearby object, like a tree, and part of the electrical current jumps from that object to you. This happens because your body, full of salt water and electrolytes, offers a lower-resistance path than the air gap between you and the struck object. If you’re sheltering under a tree during a storm, this is exactly the scenario that puts you at risk.
Ground current is another major threat. When lightning hits the earth near you, the electrical charge spreads outward through the soil. If your feet are on the ground within that zone, current can travel up one leg and down the other. This is actually how most lightning injuries occur, not from direct strikes but from electricity radiating through the ground. It’s also why standing with your feet close together (reducing the voltage difference between your legs) is part of standard safety advice if you’re caught outdoors.
The Blast Wave You Don’t Expect
Lightning superheats the air around it to roughly 30,000 degrees Kelvin, causing the air to expand explosively. That expansion is thunder, but up close, it’s not just sound. It’s a pressure wave. At the source, the overpressure can approach 1,470 pounds per square inch. Even a few centimeters from the lightning channel, the pressure still reaches 147 to 294 psi.
To put that in perspective, eardrums begin to rupture at around 29 psi. A normal eardrum tears at 40 to 50 psi. Chest and lung trauma starts at 29 to 72.5 psi. So a strike landing just a few meters away can generate more than enough force to cause real blast injuries. Lightning’s pressure wave has been documented tearing clothing off victims, fracturing long bones, rupturing eardrums, and damaging lungs. It can also force a pocket of air behind the breastbone and injure the spleen, liver, and gastrointestinal tract. Eardrum rupture is one of the most common lightning injuries overall.
What Happens Inside Your Body
The most immediately life-threatening effect is cardiac arrest. Lightning delivers a massive electrical jolt that can disrupt the heart’s rhythm, stopping it. The good news: lightning-induced cardiac arrest has an unusually high survival rate compared to other causes, but only if CPR begins right away. Unlike what many people assume, a lightning victim does not carry a residual electrical charge. It is completely safe to touch and resuscitate someone who has been struck.
Lightning also overwhelms the nervous system. A condition called keraunoparalysis causes immediate but temporary paralysis in one or more limbs after a strike. The limbs go limp, sometimes with complete loss of sensation. This happens because the massive electrical surge overstimulates the autonomic nervous system, causing blood vessels along the spinal cord to spasm. The paralysis typically resolves on its own, but it can be terrifying in the moment, especially if you don’t know it’s temporary.
Longer-term neurological problems are common too. Some survivors develop chronic pain with hypersensitivity, sweating, and swelling in affected limbs. Cardiovascular irregularities can persist. Cognitive issues like memory problems, difficulty concentrating, and personality changes are frequently reported by survivors in the weeks and months that follow.
Eyes, Ears, and Skin
Your ears are particularly vulnerable. Tympanic membrane rupture is one of the most frequently documented lightning injuries, caused both by the electrical current passing through the body and by the blast wave’s overpressure. Hearing loss can be temporary or permanent depending on the severity.
Cataracts are a delayed effect that catches many survivors off guard. They typically develop three to six months after the strike, long after the initial injuries have been treated. Anyone who has been struck or exposed to a nearby strike should have their eyes monitored in the months that follow.
One of the most visually striking effects is the appearance of Lichtenberg figures on the skin: fern-like, branching red patterns that look almost like fractals. Despite being commonly called “fractal burns,” they don’t actually involve burned tissue. They appear about an hour after the strike and are most likely caused by temporary dilation of tiny blood vessels near the skin’s surface in response to the electrical discharge. In survivors, they fade within hours. Only a minority of lightning strike victims develop them, but they’re distinctive enough to be a near-certain sign of a lightning injury.
Staying Safe Outdoors
The simplest rule: if you can hear thunder, you’re within striking distance. Lightning can travel 10 miles or more from the center of a storm, sometimes striking in areas where it’s not even raining. As a thunderstorm approaches, objects on the ground, trees, buildings, even tall people, begin sending upward electrical streamers when the descending charge gets within roughly a hundred yards. You won’t see or feel these streamers, but they’re the mechanism by which lightning “chooses” its target.
The National Weather Service recommends waiting at least 30 minutes after the last thunder before going back outside. Electrical charges linger in clouds after a storm appears to have passed, and many lightning injuries happen when people assume the danger is over too soon. If you’re caught in the open with no shelter available, crouch low with your feet together to minimize ground current exposure. Avoid isolated trees, open fields, hilltops, and bodies of water.
Why Indoors Isn’t Automatically Safe
Being inside a building dramatically reduces your risk, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Most indoor lightning injuries happen through conduction. When lightning strikes a building, the current travels through the path of least resistance, which often means the electrical wiring and metal plumbing. Metal pipes in your walls and floors act as conduits, carrying the charge through sinks, bathtubs, and faucets. Metal doesn’t attract lightning, but once a strike occurs, it provides an efficient path for the current to follow.
The National Weather Service recommends staying away from all plumbing during a thunderstorm: no showers, no baths, no washing dishes. Stay off corded phones and away from anything plugged into an electrical outlet. Laptops and phones running on battery power are fine. The safest spot is in the interior of a building, away from windows, walls with wiring, and any metal fixtures that connect to the outside.