What It's Like to be Struck by Lightning - Neatorama

Jason Marlin of ars technica was struck by a bolt of lightning. He was apparently okay enough to write about it right away.

Yesterday, I was sitting in my studio office—basically a converted garage—while a thunderstorm brewed outside. After wrapping up a conference call with some of Ars' finest, I was getting ready to dive back into work when the storm really picked up. "Ahhhh," I thought as I leaned back in my chair to stare out at the strange greenish light against a purple-clouded backdrop. "So beautiful!"

At that moment—and this part is a little foggy—a bright arc of electricity shot through the window and directly into my chest. I'm not sure whether the arc originated from the sky or the ground, but it knocked me out of my chair. I hit the concrete floor and bounced back up to my feet, which were shuffling at top speed into a bookshelf. I remember thinking, "OK, going to die now. Do not fall down. Do not pass out."

I've read that being struck by lightning is akin to a being hit by a huge defibrillator. I'm not sure about that—but it did feel magnitudes worse than the time I touched an electric fence as a kid.

The paramedics urged him to go to a hospital for tests, but he declined. Read the rest of his first-hand account and the aftermath. Link -via Digg

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I once met a lady who had been struck by lightning when she was a forest ranger. It did something to her teeth fillings (probably vaporized them) and she had to keep going to the dentist. It also fried something in her brain that messed up her metabolism, so she gained lots of weight. She had been skinny, but will live the rest of her life as an obese woman. Sad, that.

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I've been around high voltage long enough to have seen a few accidents and talked to a few people that survived previous accidents, and doctors have always made a big deal about them needing to go in to have their heart checked after the accident, even in cases where the current didn't look like it went through the chest. It mostly amounts to sitting next to an EKG machine for an hour, while reading or otherwise trying not too be bored. They just wanted to check that the heart rhythm was ok, which it seems to be in most cases, but I guess it can highlight heart problems you may have not known you had or in rare cases cause issues that are difficult to see at first.

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Part of it is probably the extra publicity they've received from sites like this.

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Since World of Goo is a digital product, they lose nothing if someone buys it for just a penny (presuming no selling cost involved).

I always wonder if this would work on physical goods, where there is a non-zero cost of goods. It's iffy - but there are some pay-what-you-want restaurants that boost their profits with this scheme.

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Tx Neatoland for posting this.

I have read through the various links and forums and it is very interesting (if you are into this sort of thing :)

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Alex, since they went through Paypal, there are costs associated with collecting the money -- I think they said they lost money for any donation less than 30 cents.

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i had pirated it on my wii so i took the opportunity to give them a little money. i can't afford $20 for a casual game i played for a couple hours but $5 seemed justified

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Well thanks to this post I've bought the game for $0.50 and that's $0.50 more than they would have had because I would never have got it otherwise...Plus it's a really cool game, well happy!

Yes...I am cheap.

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How long before the game becomes boring do you realize you've paid 20 bucks for pixels. I paid out ten bucks for another physics game which was very challenging, but after about a week my brain was tired and I had built a solution for every level. I haven't used it since. I can only hope these games can inspire future architects and inventors.

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You could say the same thing about any medium pwscott... how long before a book becomes boring do you realize you've paid 20 bucks for a stack of paper with small symbols printed on it?

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Radiohead tried this a few years ago, except they did this at the time when the album came out and not a year after release. The wiki page goes back and forth between album sales being very successful and mediocre...so I am not really sure how that one turned out.

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I think I'll toss them $5 myself for their year old independently developed game just to support them, and have it on my computer should I ever have the desire to play it. This business model works well as long as there is no middle man, and unfortunately, Paypal is such a thing and profits could be better had it not been necessary. Like record companies, I would much rather avoid them and put the money directly into the hands of the artists.

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I paid $2.

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I bought this game when it first was released for $20 then I bought it again at a store for $20. So I spent $40 for the game.

It is a great games especially if you play it on a tablet.

What makes it even better is the lack of DRM.

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