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Thunderstorm safety concern

caters

Sage
I know that in my Kepler Bb story, with just stone age technology and no nearby cave, that my humanoids are able to survive even the worst disasters.

But once the clay in between the logs is fired with a torch and any accidental fire on the wood is put out, I am still concerned about how safe the chambered home really is in a thunderstorm. With the clay having already been fired, the only thing that water could do to it to make it unsafe is rot the wood.

So water, even a downpour is not my main concern when it comes to thunderstorm safety. My main concern is lightning strikes. Now of course, if their skin had sufficient electrical charge and that electrical charge was layered like this:

OAEtWpB.jpg


lightning wouldn't be a problem. The positive charge on the top would repel any long distance traveling, positive polarity lightning.

Negative polarity lightning is more common and its pathway is more vertical than positive polarity lightning. The negative charges deep down would repel this kind of lightning.

Or maybe I have those backwards but my point is that if the skin had sufficient charge to repel lightning and that charge was layered so positive was on the top and negative was on the bottom, the most a humanoid would get is a 2nd degree burn from the lightning strike.

But this electrical charge comes with its own complications, including reproduction(repelled or stuck together).

So I am assuming that their skin is like that of a human, no significant electrical charge.

The homes my humanoids live in are mostly underground but there are parts of it that are up on the surface. My humanoids, at least in their first civilization, live in a grassland much like the prairies in the USA. This area of grassland is surrounded by forest where they hunt most of their prey, including the occasional bear.

This comes with multiple risks during a thunderstorm.

If a humanoid happens to be in the forest hunting when a thunderstorm comes, the humanoid should crouch down so that the electricity travels through 1 leg and out the other without causing cardiac arrest. Since electricity can induce muscle contraction, if they already got their prey, they should hold it while crouched down and keep the prey from touching the ground or the humanoid's legs to avoid the meat getting tough.

If a humanoid is out in the open grassland and doesn't know where home is(children are more likely to have this happen than adults), the humanoid should crouch down and preferably, call for help.

And even if lightning doesn't actually strike them, there is another risk that is equally dangerous, That is a rapidly spreading wildfire caused by lightning striking the grass. It could burn down everything in the surface chambers but if it is rapidly spreading across the grass, it is more important that the humanoids get underground ASAP. A more controlled fire in the forest would give them enough time to get all the surface chamber stuff in underground storage before it gets to the grass if it even gets there.

So if there is no wildfire, just a thunderstorm, will the humanoids be safe in the surface chambers from lightning strikes or should they go underground regardless of whether or not there is a wildfire?
 

Vaporo

Inkling
Hmmm. I don't know that lightning strikes really pose a significant hazard, unless lightning strikes are much, much more common in your world than ours. I mean the getting struck by lightning is literally used as a metaphor for a rare event.

I don't know why crouching down would make the electricity more likely to travel through one side of the body than the other. Standing on one leg maybe, but not crouching down. Either way, though, the lightning probably isn't going to care very much about whether you're standing on one leg or two. There's a lot of voltage flowing through a person's body when they get struck by lightning. If there's enough energy stop their heart, I doubt it will matter too much whether most of the voltage is flowing through the center or down the side of the body.

Crouching would help, though. You're lower to the ground, so the lightning would be less likely to see your body as the shortest path to the ground.

Believe it or not, most people struck by lightning actually survive. About only a 10% mortality rate, if I remember right. I believe that this is because lightning is very high voltage, but low amperage, and amperage is the thing that kills you (The high voltage is what allows the lightning to jump from the sky to the ground. Getting hit by high voltage hurts, but it isn't quite as harmful as high amperage).

Giving your people an electric charge on the surface of their skin probably wouldn't do much to mitigate lightning strikes. Your people would be constantly discharging any built up charge into the ground, so maintaining the charge would be a constant drain on their strength. Plus, the kind of charge necessary to turn away a lightning strike would be enormous, far greater than what could realistically be produced biologically. Even if they could produce that kind of charge, their bodies would have to be so electrically tolerant that the lightning probably wouldn't harm them anyways.

The risk of wildfires from lightning is real, but I would think that the heavy rain that is usually associated with a thunderstorm would mitigate the threat.

Also, If I were a hunter caught in a thunderstorm so severe that I have a significant chance of getting struck by lightning, then the toughness of the meat from the kill that I'm carrying would be the least of my worries.

So, short answer: Yes. They would probably be safe from lightning.
 
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