lightning and tents

[Johnathan H Christ]

ok so i was spining at a full moon gathering a couple weeks ago and a thunderstorm blew through. and we're all stuck in our tents, torrents of rain coming down on our west VA shanty town. lightning crashing all around, and i wonder....is a tent protection?

my first thought would be no.

lightning goes to ground in the quickest way possible as far as i know. but ....

if it hits a tree, and goes elsewhere before ground would it go through the tent and hit the people inside.... or would it hit the poles of the tent, and just scare the shit out of those inside, while melting the polyplastic shit the walls are made of?

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[canofsoup15]

Lightning can go from ground to sky and also sky to ground. With that being said, when it comes from the ground its normally on grass so i wouldnt worry about that. As for it hitting your tent, the chances are very very unlikely, and if it did, depending on what the tent was made of it, it probably wouldnt do anything except leave a charred hole in your tent. If there was metal in the tent it would travel through that. But if it strikes jus the tent itself, it would, again leave a hole, but would probably also send some sort of shock to those within the tent.

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[SatCam]

Well it really depends. If the tent had some metal in it, you have a higher chance. If it was steaked into the ground with plastic, then your chance of getting electricuted would be reduced. Also, if there are trees nearby, the lightening would probably choose the trees instead (although if the trees are in very close proximity, the lightening could strike both you and the tree). The lightening always takes the shortest route to the ground.

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[Mike Teacher]

Lightning can go from ground to sky and also sky to ground.


I think most lightning strikes do this many times a second; no one really noticed until they got the super slo-mo photography; most famously developed by Harold Edgerton; he was mostly military, but the bullet through the apple or playing card? Thats him.

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[Mike Teacher]

Oh, and no one remembers the second of ANYthing, so the second trip to land on the Moon is not remembered, but by the people at NASA.

The coditions at the Cape were horrible downpours, the cloud tops were high, and everyone looked at each other and said, well, we're within the acceptable ranges for weather, and if we dont launch now, we have to wait for the moon to come around again [28 days] so they say Go.

It took them about 30 seconds to regret this. As the Saturn V took off, its rocket exhaust formed a nice ionized channel from Ship to Ground, and the Whole fucking thing was struck by lightning twice. Imagine the takeoff in the Movie Apollo 13, except instead of One Warning light; Every Single Warning light starts flashing, and they lose the platform; the inertial guidance system, and oh yeah, theyre flying like a bat out of hell on top of 365 feet of Saturn V.

Took them a few minutes to realize everything was ok, and amazingly enough, and the people at NASA today say NO WAY would this happen today; but they gave Apollo 12 the go ahead to go walk on the moon, and Pete and Al did.

On the way home; some scientists thought the lightning might have blown the pyros that blow the parachutes out; and if that was so; Apollo 12 would splash down in he pacific going maybe 400 miles an hour. The parachutes opened.

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