Does wiki detail the percentage of poll/lightning survivors that become superheros?

I bet Whales have been hit by lightning going up for air before. I'm sure plenty of storms last over 90 minutes in the middle of the ocean where there's water constantly evaporating everywhere.

And there may have been mentally defective whales that didn't know any better.

As to whether it would kill them or not, I don't know about that. If the size of the subject matters than probably not but if it's more about frying the subjects brain or jamming up the circulatory system then maybe so.

whale elitist itt

A single bolt of lightning contains enough current to fry hundreds or thousands of people. Most people survive lightning strikes not because the strike wasn't powerful enough but because their skin was a good enough conductor to draw the lightning through the skin and around the vital organs.

So any bolt of lightning is more than powerful enough to kill a whale. The fact that they have evolved to avoid electrical storms suggests that they are vulnerable to them. Also, like someone suggested, whales would have been killed earlier in the evolutionary process when they didn't know to avoid the storms, or whales with a mutation leaving them without that avoidance mechanism.

Even apart from all of those I think some whales occasionally have to surface during lightning storms, and some of those get hit by lightning, and some of those die. I'd go with >1000, and it could be millions.

One counterpoint is that lightning doesn't strike as often at sea.

anyone who thinks mobius actually ever worked at a Marine Land is getting levelled hard that account, whatever it is, doesnt make serious posts

what about electric eels? do you think a whale has ever been killed by a pack of those buggers? and do you think maybe we could farm them as a new sustainable energy source?

Sick WHOI reference imo.

'bout tree fiddy

In before picture of Kurosh.

I would say 0 whales have been killed by lightning.

Big difference between salt and fresh water. One conducts the other insulates.

Google has turned up an interesting site that may help answer this once and for all.

Color me shocked that this was in Chile and not Dubai.

What happens if electric eels are struck by lightning?

Do they become non-electric eels? Do they become SUPER electric eels?

don't want to hijack, but this has always bewildered me, and I've never heard it phrased like you just did. Usually people say that birds aren't electrocuted because they aren't grounded; they say that when birds aren't grounded, the electricity has no incentive to go through them. But you're saying the electricity does go through them, but because they aren't grounded the electricity is harmless. Are you right? I'm pretty excited, because if you're right, it will clear up a lifelong mystery for me. But just wondering, how does the character of the electricity that is coursing through their bodies change depending on whether it's grounded? Why does gentle electricity become evil electricity the instant a bird's beak touches the ground?

I am not an electrician fwiw

That's like getting shot while you're falling off a cliff.

I guess technically it counts.

Interesting first post?

The electricity still goes into the birds. "Electrocution" is caused from the current going from high to low voltage areas. This doesn't happen with the birds because they aren't the quickest way to a low voltage area. In effect, their bodies remain high voltage while they are on the wires.

in before syriana video of damon's kid

Cliff notes at bottom.

Ok, I just spent a couple hours on this damn intensive math analysis, that actually is probably spot on, but no one will read or pay any attention to.

Bastards.

Good thing I'm doing this mostly for me.




(lightning striking the open ocean)

Whales have been around 50 million years.

A rough scan of all the whale species, including toothed whales suggests at any given time (until recently) there might be 10 million whales floating around in the ocean. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/505477 : The most common is the minke whale. The most common toothed whale is the sperm whale. (Both estimated at about a million at one time.)


[img]http://www.*********************/uploads/f57635e6fb.gif[/img]
(lightning strikes per year per square KM) http://askville.amazon.com/lightning...uestId=3738117

Based on this chart, lightning is certainly less common at sea, but it's not unheard of. Also it's more common near the coasts, which is also where whales live. (I don't have a source on this but I think it's common sense to assume there are more whales close to coasts than out in the middle of the open ocean - also based on documentaries and reading up on some species some species - please refute if wrong). So just pure eyeball rough guess I'd say the number of lightning strikes per sq. km per year within 100 KM of the coast is 7.

Remember it's not that important to get it completely accurate, just to be somewhere in the order-of-magnitude ballpark.

So to figure out the total ocean area within 100 KM of a coast is a little tricky. We can't just multiple the coastline length (587k KM) * 100 because all the crags and right turns will be magnified. So lets just wild-ass guess and say the earth has about 2x its tropical circumference and 5x its longitude in 100 KM wide strips of coastline (look at the map). That is 2*37k km + 5*20k km = 174k KM of coastline (ironing out the small crags). This is inline with our 587k miles with crags, so that's good.

So we have 174k * 100 KM wide = 17 million square KM of coastal whale habitat.

So let's just say 1 whale per square KM. That works out nicely. It also passes the sanity check with what we know about whales and their need for huge habitats to roam around in.


So we have our one whale swimming around in his 1 KM of habitat. What are his odds of getting hit in a given year? We know from previous reading in this thread that the lightning pretty much has to strike him directly, as any water will conduct electricity away from him. Although I would think if it hit his blow hole spout, the electricity would actually conduct right into him. But for our purposes now let's just assume the whale gets hit if the lightning happens to strike right on his body while he's surfaced.

From reading around it looks like whales breathe about every 5 minutes, but can stay under for 30 when they need to. Let's assume a whale stuck in a lightning storm is trying to breathe as little as possible so staying under for 30. I think his whole surface, spout, breathe, dive sequence takes about 5-10 seconds, depending on the size of the whale. Although the last 5 seconds of that might be only the tail out of the water. And a strike on the tail may not kill the whale. So let's say 5 seconds.

Another wild-assed guess, but let's say the average exposed surface of a breathing whale is about half the size of the top of a bus. (Minke and Sperm whales are both pretty big, and they're the most populous - blue whales can be longer than 2 buses). So we'll say about (7.5x2) 15 sq meters.


Ok, now we're getting somewhere. Remember we have 7 lightning strikes per year over 1 sq. KM (= 1 million sq. meters). So let's break down the odds of our one whale getting struck by one of those 7 lightning strikes in a given year:

(5 seconds / 30 minutes) = .28% = percent of time whale is at the surface.

(15 / 1 million) = .000015 = odds 1 lightning strike hits the area of the ocean that the whale is swimming in.

.000015 * .28% = 4.16667E-08 = odds of whale being at surface when that strike hits.

4.16667E-08 * 7 = 2.91667E-07 = odds of that one whale getting hit in a given year.


So obviously pretty small. But lets look at the whole population, and over time.

2.91667E-07 * 17 million (sq KM of whale habitat) = 4.96 whales getting hit on the top of their bodies every year on average.

So multiply that * 50 million and lol. You have 250 million whales dying of lightning strikes over all time.


It's very possible my math is off by even an order of magnitude on the whale surface area, or coastal habitat, or time at the surface, or how well the avoid electrical storms, or whale fatality from lightning strikes, etc. BUT the point is, you're still going to have a crapton of whales hit by lightning in the history of whales.

The only caveat is if there's something about their bodies that make them less likely to be hit than the ocean, or maybe if they're wet the electricity just shoots around their bodies. But I think you could also argue their spout could act like a giant lightning rod and draw the lightning right into their bodies. Who knows on that.


cliff notes: Point is by sheer odds of exposed surface area, whales should have been struck at least a few million times in history.

great post...even if your math is off (not sure...i suck at math)

Cliff's Cliff notes: bout 7

this is the best answer in the whole thread (of course math post previous to mine is pretty awesome too). but IF they actually actively avoid going to the surface during lightning storms then it almost has to be the case that whales at the very least used to be hit by lightning earlier in their evolutionary history.

This is the kind of science OOT was built for.

Thanks! So just to be clear, the transition of going from zero voltage (flying) to high voltage (landing on wire) is no problem, and as long as all parts of you are touching equal amounts of voltage, you're fine. You are only in trouble when different parts of you are connected to nouns containing unequal voltage, because then you become some sort of transitional bridge. Is that right?

My last question would be why? Why is HIGH--US--HIGH ok, but HIGH--US--LOW so unpleasantly sparky? How is the electricity behaving differently?