Lightning Survivors Believe They Are Part of 'Divine Master Plan'

Joshua Foer/Teresa Neumann Reporting : Jun 15, 2005
Slate.com

In August 1999, Jerry LeDoux of Sulphur, Louisiana, was standing in a puddle of water when he was struck by lightning. All he remember is that he was overcome by an "intensely bright light" and when he woke up a half-hour later, 20 feet away, with a vague taste of battery acid in his mouth, he said the soles of his shoes had melted, his two-way radio had exploded, and several of his teeth had shattered. The medical ID tag he wore around his neck was melted into his chest.

According to a report in Slate, LaDoux drove home from work that afternoon and was back on the job the next day. "I didn't even know I was hurt. I didn't realize anything was wrong," says LeDoux. It took several weeks before he realized just how "fried" his circuits were and almost six months to find a doctor who believed he'd been struck. His frustration mirrors the emotions of others who have survived a lightning strike, many of whom say they have trouble convincing friends and family even doctors that they've been struck. Part of the problem is that strikes are rare and symptoms are obscure. Only a handful of doctors worldwide are experts in post-electrocution syndrome, known as keraunopathology, and even these doctors just aren't sure exactly how lightning affects the human nervous system.

"Unlike garden-variety electrical shock," says reporter Joshua Foer, "which finds the quickest route directly through the body, lightning can flash over the outside of a victim, sometimes blowing off clothes without leaving so much as a mark on the skin. The high-voltage electricity that zips through the body does its damage in just a few milliseconds. In many cases, there are no visible burns, though temporary fernlike bruises called Lichtenberg figures sometimes appear. Medical tests like MRIs, CT scans, and X-rays usually come back normal. But those are anatomical tests of how the body looks, not functional tests of how it works, and they can be deceiving. Zap a computer with an electrical surge and its hardware will appear unchanged, but that doesn't mean it'll still be able to run Leisure Suit Larry. The same is true of humans."

Indeed, it is estimated that about 70 percent of lightning-strike survivors are beset with bizarre disorders that are a mystery to medical science. Many are left with severe short-term memory loss and chronic irritability. Tremors, mini-seizures, and sleep disorders are common symptoms according to the report, and so are chronic pain and a lack of equilibrium. Many survivors complain of intense headaches and a constant ringing in their ears. One survivor shaved his head "to compensate for a persistent feeling that he's about to spontaneously combust."

LaDoux was one of 100 lightning survivors attending this year's 15th annual International Conference of Lightning-Strike and Electric-Shock Survivors in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., started in 1990 by survivor Steve Marshburn Sr. of Jacksonville, N.C., who began reaching out to fellow survivors after he got in touch with a few he had read about in a newspaper. Since then, Marshburn and his wife have talked 15 survivors out of suicide and helped save several marriages. Many of the miraculous stories shared by the survivors were double edged, as in the case of one man who said he'd aged 50 years overnight after getting shocked by a light bulb.

Summing up the conference, reporter Joshua Foer commented on the song, "Angels Among Us" by Alabama, which was played during one part of the conference. "That song," says Foer, "about the divine hands that intercede on our behalf, poses a theological question ‘Why me?' that torments surprisingly few victims of this most freakish act of nature. The survivors I spoke with almost all told me the same thing: Their accidents were somehow part of a divine master plan. If so, what were we to make of the violent thunderstorms and dazzling lightning shows that lit up Pigeon Forge all three days of the conference? I asked LeDoux about this, and also about what he thought of the remarkable coincidence that Tennessee Electric had decided to host a conference on the same days in the same hotel as the lightning-strike survivors. He didn't think much of either oddity. In the scheme of things, he said, they just weren't that improbable."