Bear Grease - Ep. 489: Struck by Lightning

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

Clay Newcomb explores the science, mystery, and raw power of lightning through the firsthand stories of John Donovan, a bear hunter who was struck while sitting in a tree stand, and Spence Spencer, a farmer who was hit while working in his chicken pasture. Both survived, but neither walked away unchanged. Clay also sits down with weather analyst Joshua Wisel of weather225.com to nerd out on what actually happens when lightning forms, why it can strike miles from a storm, why trees and tall objects are so dangerous, and which common lightning myths are completely wrong. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The wait is over. Join us Saturday, August 15th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p. for the grand opening of the new meat eater's store at 50th and France in Edina, Minnesota. Meet Clay Newcomb, Brent Reeves, Spencer Newhart, and my personal whitetel sense, Tony Peterson. Be one of the first 150 people in line to receive an exclusive gift. And stick around for hourly giveaways all day long. We'll see you there. There are 300 billion stores.

strikes of lightning in the atmosphere of planet earth each year, equaling 100 strikes of lightning per second. And I've been long fascinated by the display of power of natural systems. Giant waves, raging rivers, violent storms. But there is one that is the definition of flashy when it comes to natural stuff that happens. The visual and auditory display of lightning's unhaltered power is unmatched. It's mysterious, far beyond the control of man, yet almost fully understood by science, predictable to a degree, inflicting instantaneous and oddly specific justice on whatever it strikes.

All the while, its motivation, meaning why it strikes and where it does, is completely untrackable. I think therein lies man's timeless fascination and fear of lightning. We're going to hear two stories of people struck by lightning, a hunter and a farmer, and it will literally put the fear of God in you. It did me. And we're going to have a true nerd-out talk about lightning with a true weatherman.

I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight. unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land presented by FHF gear American made purpose-built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore on the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning a cloud covered the

mountain all the people among the tents shook with fear Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord came down upon it in fire. Its smoke went up like the smoke of a stove and the whole mountain shook. Moses spoke and God answered him with thunder. Then the Lord came down. That was an excerpt from the book of Exodus. Only in modern times, say the last 300 years, has a crack of lightning been simply and wholly viewed as a,

a science equation, the sum of a predictable sequence of positive and negative charges in the clouds arcing to the ground in a crack of thunder and lightning fueled by a billion joules of energy. But is it just that? Because it actually is just that. It's science. But is it more? Was it more back when humans were primitive thinkers and were led around the nose by some irrational tomfoolery. Or could, still today, a flash of lightning be a window to something deeper, like a pop-up advertisement on Facebook, connecting the rational world to that sovereign, invisible, mysterious power source whose life pulsates on planet Earth that no equation can understand? I guess it matters how you choose to look at this thing. But don't get me wrong,

I'm here for the science. But, My experience on this planet has told me there's more. I'd like to introduce you to a bear hunter. My name is John Donovan, and back in September, I was hit by lightning by while bear hunting. A little backstory about the piece of property. I've been hunting it for about four years now, and I've pretty much been after this bear for the three straight seasons.

And all off-season, I was prepping the area, getting it ready. and then come opening day, no luck, getting the bear. And then it was September 18th. I got out of work and got into the stand. It was right around 1.30, 2 o'clock in the afternoon. And there was a weather cell pretty much in South Fayetteville right over Greenland, and I was paying attention to it. And I kind of just felt an eerie feeling.

And there was a wind shift out of nowhere. And I was actually texting a buddy at the time. thinking, hey, can you check the weather a little bit more for me? And, you know, maybe it was, it felt like 10 minutes, but it was probably only two minutes. I feel the wind shift again, and I just had this eerie feeling. And I said to myself, like, I think I should get down, stand, and probably 50, 60 yards behind me is this bluff. And I was thinking, let me just ride out the storm. I could tell it was probably going to be a 20 to 30 minute storm.

I'll get back up the stand and hopefully the bear comes in. So I, this one stand, my whole life, I always wear. a safety harness because my dad actually fell 31 feet out of a tree when I was a kid and really, you know, it was a very scary time. He survived thankfully and so he harped all childhood that always have a safety harness and we usually use the lifeline I think they're called. But this one stand I didn't have it and I have to get about 10 to 12 feet up and then clip in. We all know that eerie feeling of an approaching storm like John felt. It's an ancient one that's helped our species survive. We also know the feet of the feet of the fear of the future.

of being in cell range, able to text, but not having good enough service to get the radar on your weather app to pull up. I was sitting in a tree that same day, September 18, 2025, about 40 miles away from John in Arkansas. He and I both heard rolling thunder in the distance. A slight wind began to blow. The sky darkened and it felt like the sun was going to set, even though it was only mid-afternoon. And when those first drops of rules, rain start to hit you, you get the sense, I've got to get out of here. Because there's no square inch of planet Earth that's exempt from potentially being struck, and 37 million lightning bolts strike the United States each year. Rain, wind, and hail all cover these large areas. Think about this

like macro picture of the places they cover, but it's the specificity of lightning that makes it so unnerving. We've all been in a thunderstorm, but how it picks out what and when to strike is what makes it so unnerving. Two people could be in a field and one struck and the other left completely fine. But as it turns out, one in 600,000 Americans will be struck by lightning. You heard me right from the stats that I have found, one in 600,000. And that really seems high to me, but if you think about it, I bet you, you know someone or at least know of someone who's been struck. But that statistic doesn't necessarily mean that you personally have a one in 600,000 chance of being struck because people who spend a lot

of time outside have vastly higher odds of being struck than someone who rarely goes out. And other factors play in as well. As a matter of fact, if you're a man, you have a four times more likely chanced than a woman to be struck by lightning. So the actual odds are closer to one in a million that you'll be struck so you can rest easy. But John Donovan was one of them. This storm that came up on him was an isolated pop-up shower and he thought it might miss him. So he hung out in the tree and he was after this big bear. He didn't want to get down. He's 14 feet up this metal tree stand as the front edge of the storm reaches him and it starts to rain. He hears. He, he has to be. He hears a clap of thunder close and he knows that it's time to go.

So I get situated, I get about one to two steps down, and then that's when I take the clip off, and then all of a sudden one more step down, and that's pretty much the last thing I remember until I woke up, just heard a loud noise, and I was out, and then don't really know exactly how long I was out or not out for. then I just remember kind of waking up. And the only way I can describe it is if you've ever seen like a war movie where someone gets hit by a frag, I just was, everything was a slow motion. I'm looking all around and I just couldn't breathe, couldn't, like got the wind knocked out of me. And then I'm just looking all around and I just see stars and I just had no idea what happened

and smelled like a weird smell, but still didn't hit me on what actually happened. I thought I slipped. And I've long hair, of course. So my hat was all. messed up and my hair was all in my face and I lift my hand up and it something felt like it stabbed me in the forehead and that's when I was reaching for my phone and my phone was fried but I was able to use like the glare of the black screen and I just saw a welt probably the size of a baseball and that's when I just started panicking because I knew something bad happened and again still didn't even realize if I slipped if it was lightning or what it was really but I just knew I had to get out of the woods. Something was telling me you have to get out now. I don't know what was going to happen to be

honest. So I start gathering, you know, my stuff. My bow was probably 10 or so feet away from me. So then I'm starting putting the clues together. I'm like, I don't think I fell because if I fell, how did I get four feet away from the tree? How did my bow get there? And that's when I started realizing, I'm pretty sure I just got hit by lightning or the tree I was in got hit by lightning. It's odd to think that you'd be struck by lightning and not know it, but it actually makes perfect sense as the electrical charge of lightning moves at 220 million miles per hour. That's two-thirds the speed of light, so it hits you before the sound of thunder, because it's traveling faster than the speed of sound. So John is now laying bewildered on the ground, a wound on his head from smashing against the ground, and his bow is lying several feet away.

But we're going to leave him right there for now. And I'd like to introduce you to another one in a million statistic. He's also my neighbor and friend. My name is Terrell Spencer. Go by Spence. I own across the creek farm, pastured poultry farm in West Fork, Arkansas. And I'm going to talk about getting popped by lightning.

so I was moving birds. A guy called me to talk about this decision I had. And so we talked a little bit, and I got off my tractor after talking to him and was hooking up chains. And I was just like, you know what? Maybe everyone else knows better than me. And I felt like I was really supposed to do something.

And I'm just going to listen to everyone else. They're smarter than me, and I was really frustrated. And so we have these big structures. They're like a 20 by 40. They're big kind of imagine a greenhouse on skids, and that's what our hens are in. And I've got these two 20-foot logging chains. I hook up onto that structure, one on each side, and then I hook it up to my tractor, and I pull it. So we got a routine.

So I'm just kind of going through the motions. I hook those logging chains up, you know, and I've got like this rain slicker on, and I've got just, it might be the same pants I'm wearing now. they're just absolutely soaked. You know, my muck boots on. And I'm feeding the birds. So on the front of the tractor, after I unhook the chains, there's buckets of feed. So I get the buckets of feed.

I'm going to put, you know, three or four buckets of feed in there. And I finish and I'm carrying the buckets out. I open up the door, step out, shut the door. And I take a few steps. And I'm still kind of grumbling about this thing that I'm thinking on. I'm not even really paying attention to what I'm doing. and then all of a sudden like out of the corner of my eye like this pink purplish color happens and everything just kind of like when a movie fades like you know like in the end like everything

kind of turns a color it was like everything started to turn that pink and and I was like what is it was probably a split second but it felt like a couple seconds like I was like wait what's going on and then there was an explosion and uh Yeah, and I'd been really close to explosions in the war. Like I'd been tossed around by some rockets and that kind of stuff. And it was just like that. You know, like when you get hit so hard, it feels like it knocks you out of yourself. Spence was in the United States Army and served in the Iraq War in the early 2000s.

He saw some serious active combat. And no, not all of us know what it feels like to get knocked. out of yourself. But whatever just happened to him was kind of like what happened in the war and it doesn't sound good. And you might ask, how many people are actually getting struck by lightning? According to the CDC from 2006 to 2025, there were 517 lightning deaths in the United States, adding up to 25 deaths per year.

In a wider look at history, lightning deaths peaked in the 1940s when over 400 Americans were killed in a single year, 1943. During that time, the government started national marketing campaigns educating people about the danger of lightning. This helped, and lightning deaths have decreased in the last several decades since then. But clearly they aren't absent. As a matter of fact, as I'm writing this podcast, a 15-year-old boy was killed by lightning as he sheltered his 13-year-old younger brother from lightning on top of a Colorado mountain in late July. That's really hard to understand, and our condolences go out to that family. But the people who die are actually quite rare because 90% of people that are struck by lightning live. On average, 270 to 300 people are struck each year, and John and Spence clearly survived.

But what is lightning? I know just the guy to tell us. Red Bull, Dragonberry, and Tropicberry Energizers now at McDonald's, made with freeze-dried fruit, and an electric burst of flavor. The all-new Red Bull Energizers, now at McDonald's. McDonald's. This product may not be right for you. High in caffeine. Details on McDonald's. dot CA at participating Canadian restaurants excluding Quebec. Before we get back into it, I want to tell you about the new First Light, Bear

Grease Bibs. I have collaborated with First Light to build the perfect backcountry utility bib overall. And these might be new to the world, but they're not new to me. In 2019, almost seven years ago, I sketched out the first drawing and I wanted these bibs to have a chapped front to make them briar-proof. I wanted them to be breathable. I wanted them to have kind of an athletic fit. I wanted them to have a weatherproof pocket on the front for your cell phone if you fell in the river. They've got lots of big pockets, lots of ventilation. They're tough, they're durable. They're made for small game hunting. They're made for working on the farm. And they're the bear grease bibs, man. They're now for sale at the meat eater.com slash bibbs.

Hello, this is Joshua Weisel with Weather 2-2-T-5, Test-T-S-1-2, Test-T-S. All right, we're rolling. Awesome. So, introduction for who I am. My name is Joshua Weisel, and this is my company behind me, Weather 2-25. I've been doing weather broadcasting since 2015, and excited to be here and talk about some lightning. Josh is in his mid-20s, and he's functionally immediately. meteorologist. He doesn't work for a TV station, nor has he taken an established career route.

I kind of view him like a weather outlaw, operating outside the mainstream system and absolutely obsessed with weather. He has his own streaming weather service called Weather 225, where he is the chief weather analysis serving the four corners area of Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas. I think it's better than the Weather Channel. And I like the passion of it. So lightning is a phenomenon that obviously we have all encountered. You know, for whatever reason in this part of the country, I always laugh and tell people. It's not that peaceful, you know, overnight thunderstorm that you can sleep to.

And it's that peaceful rumble of thunder off in the distance. It always sounds like a bomb goes off. And so lightning is one of the more dangerous phenomenon with weather because it doesn't just have to be severe weather to occur. in order for lightning to occur, you typically need the warm and humid, unstable environment that we get here in the south, and that leads to taller storms. And it may sound weird, but you need taller storms in order for lightning to develop because aloft, you get frozen ice particles and you get water particles, and they bounce around up in the updraft. And as they bounce around, they're kind of exchanging the charges, and they start to conflict. So then you see the charges that they separate to the top and the bottom of the storm. And so, you know, looking at how that works, negative charges go up, positive charges go down.

And that's how you get lightning to start forming is the charges. And again, you need more of an unstable and human environment. So that's why the South gets most of the lightning in terms of. statistical deaths and occurrences. Lightning is the result of ice and water particles sloshing around in a cloud, creating an electrical charge, kind of like a load of towels being tossed around in your dryer, creating static electricity that zaps you when you touch it. The clouds are the towels and your hand is the earth.

The positive charges go up and the negative charges go down in the cloud. and then the positive charges on the earth's surface attract those low hanging negative charges, and a bolt of lightning is born. Kind of like an unheard of before anecdote being birthed and born right out of Brent Reeves' lips. And similar to his hot air, lightning heats up the air to 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit, making it expand so quickly. It creates a shockwave, a boom, a flash. of electromagnetic radiation.

And as John said, the South is the lightning capital of America, but Florida is the lightning capital of all the states with more deaths than any other place, averaging between 7 and 10 per year. But Texas has the most lightning strikes with around 13 million striking annually. But Oklahoma, Oklahoma,

has the highest concentration of lightning with 73 flashes per square mile annually. To break that down, the way it makes sense to me, Florida has more people, so more people get killed. They've also got a lot of ag and flat country. Texas has the bigger geographic area, so it gets the most lightning, but it sounds to me like Oklahoma actually has the most lightning.

And that's probably the reason that this song was written in Oklahoma. That's the Turnpike Tribador's song, A Tornado Warning. There's no doubt the storm they wrote about had lightning in it. But let's get back to John Donovan, who wished he'd had a weather warning. But remember, he doesn't know what's happened. He's woken up on the ground after blacking out. He's clearly falling out of his tree stand, and his phone is fried and doesn't work. So again, these are all like, I'm kind of falling in and out of,

understanding where I was, but I knew I had to get out because no one was really going to be looking for me for probably, like I said, I think it was three or three 30. People had my location, but, um, so I started gathering my belongings and I'm roughly, I call about three quarter of a mile down this bluff and my truck's parked up and I just started going up this hill and every 10 to 20 feet, I'm falling down and I'm just taking everything out of me to even walk. And I got to the point where I would pick like a rock or a tree and I'm like, okay, I'm going to make it there. And I would get up and then I'd start passing out. And then about halfway up is when my whole left side started to not work. I felt my arm going limp. I was holding my bag. I had to let go in my bag and my vision and my left side just started

getting all blurry. And it was the same side where I hit my head. So that was really, really scary me. And then again, the time frame, like the minutes, the hours are still kind of fuzzy. I know it happened roughly around three. I got to my truck, I want to say around 350, right before four o'clock and couldn't connect my phone. My phone still wasn't working, so I couldn't dial out or anything. So in my mind, my plan was I need to get somewhere where someone can find me. So my plan was to try to safely crash or pull off into a ditch by 71. And another like 10 or so minutes that I don't really remember. I must have taken my boots off and my pants off because when I ended up getting to the hospital later, I was in my gym shorts and a pair of like slides or something like cheap

sneakers or something I had. And I think subconsciously I was making sure my feet were working because I knew I had to use the, you know, the gas and brakes in my truck. So still don't really remember why I did that or what the reason was. But and then so I finally get in my truck. My phone's still not working and it's torrential downpour now and I keep just getting like these adrenaline rushes of okay keep going you can make it to the next road you can make it to the next road and then finally my phone connected to my truck and I see my little wife's face out of my right eye on my recent call so I just click it John barely remembers this stuff and much of it came to him days or even weeks later. It was like the lightning took his consciousness and he was fading in and out of it

trying to get back. Oddly, Terrell Spencer had a similar experience back in the chicken pasture. A lot of stuff happened, I think, pretty fast. I knew I'd been hit by lightning and everything was white and I couldn't hear any, like it was just like a reset. And when I came to, I was kind of looking over my body and then there was like all the stuff that I believe about like faith and meeting God and being judged like I can tell you I believe that more now like because I feel like I went through all that's you know there's that whole side of it but I'm looking down at my body in the rain and there's smoke coming off of me there's like this blue haze I don't know if you ever like took like alcohol and put in your hand lit it and it had that kind of like haze or hairspray

You know, when you're being just a knuckleheaded teenager or whatever. And there's just like that flame going over and it's like weird. Like that was going up. It was like this blue kind of haze that was fire thing that was going up and down my body. And then there was smoke coming up, which I think it was probably just the water evaporating. And then it's kind of like I went back into my body. And I don't know if I made that up. That's what really happened.

But that's what I experienced. And it was kind of the same. Like there's a couple times in the war where stuff like that would happen and everything would slow down and you became hyper aware. I knew I'd been hit by lightning. Like I didn't see a lightning bolt or anything. I just, it just kind of like went pink,

the explosion. And then I kind of came to and I heard, you know, hens make all kinds of sounds. You know, just like any farmer would know, like you farm cattle or hogs or whatever. whatever, like they talk to you and you can pick up on stuff.

After 20 years, I've never heard chickens make the sound that they made then. It was the only way I can describe it was like pure terror. Only a chicken farmer would get struck by lightning and described with such passion the noises he heard his hen makes afterwards. But maybe that's why across the creek farm's chicken is so good. And you too could partake in that chicken if you live in northwest Arkansas by ordering at www. www. across the creek farm.com. For real, you could order it from there.

But chicken marketing is beside the point here. It's about to get real serious, like real serious, back with Spence. So I came to, and I like knew that I was dead. and the war guys would get hit and like you have a certain amount of adrenaline something like all your insides will be messed up but you can go for you know five 10 20 30 seconds of minute you like you got some time before you go and so I was I was in that time frame like I knew I was dead and I and the only thought I had was and I can hear these hens screaming and everything kind of like my senses came back I couldn't move the right side of my body because that's where

Lightning didn't hit me later on. What we figured out is it probably hit like six inches away or a foot away. But it hit in and it came in my right side and my muck boot. It burned a hole through and then went out my left side. And so there was a hole in my muck boot, you know, right below my toes where it came in. And then there was like on my left side, it blew out skin. And so there was grass in my boot where it came in. And there was like a skin plug and a hole where it went out.

Yeah. And I guess it missed my heart. Long story short, I lived. And I'm not trying to spoiler alert. And the only thing I could think of was, I don't know if you've ever seen like a dead animal out in the rain. Like, I don't know if you kill a deer. Like we see, you know, if a chicken gets out and something kills it and it rains on, it just looks terrible. And for some reason, like my whole.

focus was I didn't want my wife or kids for that to be like how they found me just wet and dead so I I got up and I stumbled over to the pen and the hens are still screaming my hearing's coming back my vision's back like when I stood up one side of my body kind of work like it felt like when your feet go numb the other side was just dead and so like I kind of stumbled back into the pen. I opened up the door just because it's probably out of instinct. And around that door, you know, it's a 20 by 40 structure.

And around that door there was like an art, a perfect circle of dead hens. Like going like 10 foot back or whatever. Under the ruse, it's like any hen that had been in that kill zone was just dead. And then there were some like right outside of it that were like kind of like flopping around,

like kind of bobbing their head like they were stunned. And then they were all the ones on the ruse and on the back of the pen they were all pile up there just screaming their heads off so i fell back down and i pulled out my phone and my my hands weren't my fingers weren't working so it kind of felt like i was just clubbing my phone it wanted to do that face id thing you know like and i don't know if it was like the the smoke or what but like i couldn't get it to go so i'm like pawing out the pass code and i'm like man i'm on a clock here so i'm trying try and try and trying and i finally get it to go through

And it goes through to one of those dang telemarketers that's trying to sell you insurance. And so like, and I can't remember if he answered or not. But I like, so I hung up. And I'm like, God, if you're freaking kidding me. And so then I'm able to hit, you know, like call back Carla, my wife. And she's in a meeting and she hits me with one of those like in a meeting call you, or can't talk right now, call you back later. So then our church, the men in our church have like this group, like a WhatsApp group, and I go to that one. And I start doing all this text, like trying to text it.

And it's just absolute gibberish because my fingers don't work. From John and Spence's story, it's clear that if the lightning doesn't kill you, which in 90% of cases it doesn't, get instruct, disfunctionalizes you for a period of time. But now is a good time to try to understand why these guys got struck by lightning. Here's Josh from Weather 225. Now, the reason it strikes is it's looking for those charges, but it's looking for the shortest distance between the cloud base and where the item is on the surface. So that also kind of leads into, you know, the thought of tallest objects and stuff like that. air is not a good conductor for electricity, so it looks for that shortest distance. And so when it's looking for that shortest distance, it's looking for the tallest object to strike to get to those particles on the surface that are charged.

And when it does so, it typically hits the tallest things. In some cases, unfortunately, for farmers in this part of the country, that may be a cow. In other parts of the world, that may be the tallest building or a light post or something that's just allowing for that shortest distance. to make a connection. So the myth that I hear a lot to is, you know, if you're wearing like a watch or if you have a necklace or if you're, you know, carrying something metal with you, that you're automatically going to be the attraction to lightning.

So it's actually kind of a wives tale. It really doesn't matter if it's more conductive or not. It really matters if you're the tallest thing out there. So if I were to go out in the parking lot and hold like a lead pipe above my head in the thunderstorm, I'm probably going to get struck, not because of that pipe, but because I'm the tallest thing, and that's the shortest distance, so it's going to hit that object. And the reason that there's a lot of people that they believe that metal is the attraction to lightning,

it's because obviously we know that they hit metal structures the most. I've been next to a light pole that exploded from a lightning strike in my car, and, you know, that was the tallest thing out there. So it's really not, you know, one item. So if you have like a light pole, that's not going to be attracting the lightning more than, let's say, if I were to put a wooden two-by-four out in the yard. So it's just, it's mostly the height and it's the connector between the shortest distance of the cloud base to the surface. Red Bull, Dragonberry and Tropicberry Energizers now at McDonald's made with freeze-dried fruit and a electric burst of flavor.

The all-new Red Bull Energizers. Now at McDonald's. This product may not be right for you. High in caffeine, details on McDonald's.C.A. at participating Canadian restaurants, excluding Quebec. Before we get back into it, I want to tell you about the new First Light Bear Grease bibs. I have collaborated with First Light to build the perfect backcountry utility bib overall.

And these might be new to the world, but they're not new to me. In 2019, almost seven years ago, I sketched out the first drawing, and I wanted these bibs to have a chapped front, to make them briar-proof. I wanted them to be breathable. I wanted them to have kind of an athletic fit. I wanted them to have a weatherproof pocket on the front for your cell phone if you fell in the river. They've got lots of big pockets, lots of ventilation. They're tough, they're durable. They're made for small game hunting.

They're made for working on the farm. and they're the bear grease bibs, man. They're now for sale at the meat eater.com slash bibbs. Lightning strikes the highest thing around, not necessarily metal stuff. I would have got that wrong on a test. Spence was in an open pasture standing beside that portable chicken hoop house, which is probably 7, 8, 10 feet tall. He didn't get a direct hit, but it probably struck the house.

John was sitting in a white oak on the edge of a field opening and that white oak was the biggest tree he said within about 50 yards. All that being said, I still wouldn't be holding something metal in a thunderstorm for crying out loud. Juju told us all not to do that. But maybe the science doesn't really back it up. But here is John and he's driving down the road, barely hanging on to consciousness, but he's managed to contact his wife and he hears her voice.

And then hearing her voice really, really helped. And then I just, I knew I just had this like rush of energy where I knew I could make it to the hospital. Because if I pulled over and called an ambulance or she tried to get me, I felt like it was going to be roughly around the same time as if I just pulled over and wait. Looking back, maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to do. But she's talking to me. And then her perspective of the story, she said I wasn't making any sense. she said I was she didn't know what happened she just knew something was wrong from like the sound of my voice

and uh I get you know I get towards Greenland area and that's when I felt like okay I think I can make it and she said I was making a little bit more sense I could start you know piecing little pieces together she was just she just kept repeating keep talking keep talking keep talking so at that point she was able to realize okay he's if something if he stops talking We can go get him help. So finally, I get to the hospital, and I remember her face when she saw my head, and she tried to, like, compose herself because she didn't want to freak me out more, but then she knew it was really serious.

And she gets me out of the truck, getting to the hospital, and it was just, I was just like a zombie, basically. Had no idea. I wasn't making sense. She was doing most of the talking for me. And then the people are just looking at me, and they're like, what happened? And then she said lightning. And that's when everybody just, you know, like trauma, whatever.

And they just brought me into a on a bed and hooked up so many machines. Again, I'm kind of fuzzy. I don't remember a lot of it. She knows. She remembers more of that. And they, I mean, I was, I think my blood pressure was in the 190s. I mean, it was bad. I had no fluids in me.

They had to hook me up. I, I sweated everything out of my system, just trying to get off that mountain. and just all the energy it took to be able to get out. Let's see what happened to Spence. He's managed to get a garbled text message out to our men's church group thread. It's incoherent, but it mentions something about lightning. And this one guy named Dalton, he's like an aircraft guy,

somehow Dalton, he's like the Spence whisperer, because he figures it out. He's like, guys, I think Spence needs help. He's hit by lightning. instantly they like mobilized and I have a friend Zach Newcomb he's like one of my oldest best friends that Zach is my older brother Zach and he was walking out the door on his way to Lowe's so he says I'm coming and so I stand up and I start like quasi-modoing it like crawling so I'm like I'll go I'll go get over there to the gate so I limp over the gate and I get there and I collapse and here

in a red Tacoma comes the hero of the hour, my friend Zach Newcomb, and he whips in, and I'm there. And I'm so weak and nothing works and he pulls up. He thought I was dead. I mean, from what he said, that he got there and he had to essentially pick me up and put me in his truck and then ran. And it was, I've got a history with Zach. It was kind of all funny because like, Zach helped me. He's a therapist too. And he helped me when I got back from the war

from like being blown up a few times or being close to it. And so like, I look at them and I'm kind of like bobbing around and I'm like, Zach, I'm a tough SOB, aren't I?

And then I like start laughing. And then I have like a flashback and I start crying. And then I'm like laughing. And I'm like, I think it's the war. And it was like the first. perfect person, right? And so I'm like going on this roller coaster, we hit a traffic jam,

and I'm like, Zach, I think you're going to have to ride on, go around the other side. They get me to the ER and all that. And so I know I'm going to be okay, but I'm like, my speech is returning. I still can't move very well on my right side, I think, where the lightning came in. And we get to the ER. Spence slowly regains the function of his body and voice. But what's interesting that I haven't told you is that when he got struck, there was not even a storm directly overhead. For real, there was not a lightning storm going on around him. There were just storms in the area. And he still got struck, which is wild because it came completely without warning, which begs the question, how far away can lightning strike away from the storm? I know just the weather

analyst. I'm told he's a chief. I usually tell people be aware, even if you're up to 25, even close to 30 miles away. Now, not every storm's going to do that. The tricky thing with storms is, you know, like you mentioned, the eye of a storm. There's weird differences with some storms. In some cases, if you have an anvil cloud, you can get what's called an anvil crawler, and the lightning crawls up the anvil, and then it shoots its way miles and, miles. And typically, some of the longer bolts that you get far out ahead of a storm, those are typically positive bolts, and they're typically on the edge of the thunderstorm. In some cases,

those can actually go out as far as 25 plus miles from the actual storm itself on the leading edge. And so, you know, typical thunderstorms, they tell people around 10 miles, but some of the more unstable environments when you get some of that positive lightning as well, it can easily go 15, 20, even upwards of close to 30 miles ahead of the storm. So Mr. Weather 225 is telling me that you can be struck by lightning if you're within 30 miles of the storm. That is ridiculous and not even fair. But it even gets worse. As a matter of fact, the National Weather Service reports lightning traveling almost 90 miles, 90 miles out of the Anvil head of a thunderstorm near the Kennedy Space Center. They documented this. And for your notes,

June, July, and August are the three highest months for lightning strikes. They peak in July. But Spence was hit in February and John was hit in September. I'd like to see what other wild lightning stories Josh has heard of. So there's a couple, one of the stats that I heard was in terms of lightning strikes to a human being in a lifetime. Someone was struck seven times, and that's the record to this day. So that's one because I just can't imagine going about life. And it sounded like, you know, the stat didn't give all the information, but it sounded like it was not at the same time.

I don't know how anyone could just go on getting struck by lightning seven times. I would be terrified to go outside if that were the case. So yeah, there's that. And there's always crazy stories too. Unfortunately, I hear this one a lot, but lightning leading to house fires. Other ones that I've seen, too, is, it was, oh, it was like 2014. There was a lightning strike. It was a very famous video, the pickup truck that got struck, and it actually blew up the concrete,

and it damaged the truck when it was driving through that lightning strike. I've seen some videos of lightning hitting cars, and it can melt the dashboard type thing. So it's really weird because, you know, lightning, it's one of those phenomenons that we can kind of tell you it's going to happen. But every experience is unique and weird. So, you know, there's people that have experienced lightning and cars all have a different experience of, you know, struck the car and didn't do anything to it fully melted the dashboard type thing. There's a wives tale that if you get struck by lightning once, you're more likely to be hit again. Could that be true?

Roy Sullivan was a park ranger in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and he became known as the human lightning rod after being struck seven times. Yep, he's the guy that Josh was talking about. There's a webpage that cites all the specific circumstances of his strikes, and they all seem like the outings of a normal outdoorsy guy, you know, one that worked outside. Once he was fishing, once he was in a fire tower waiting out of storm, once he was out in the woods and walking back to his truck while he was working and he claimed that it felt like the storm was chasing him. Once his hair caught on fire after he got struck. All the strikes were documented by the park service. He died in 1983 at age 71 after being struck seven times. He didn't die because of a lightning strike.

but Spence has something to say about this idea of getting hit twice. These stories happened after a strike. It's interesting looking back, I was up in our hauler, but this lightning bolt started up in the sky and in slow motion it was like coming for me, and then it just like, wham, it hit this ash tree like a couple hundred yards away. And I remember, like, feeling like a little kid, like, I almost wet myself. But it's like I saw it coming and it just like, went down and then later in that summer I had a storm I'd finished up moving birds and I had a storm pop up

and I had lightning bolts hitting near and so they say like once you get hit after the fact yeah after the accident yeah I had two lightning strikes nearby and I felt like there's that part in the office where Dwight sets it on fire and he throws fire crackers and they're like the fire shooting at us and I feel like the lightning shooting at me you know like I just feel like I just feel like it has it out for me. So when I see a storm now, I'm just like, nope, and if you, you don't want me around you, like, it's just, so I don't know if there's truth to that, but they say you're more likely to get pop. Sounds to me like lightning is living rent-free in Spence's head, and probably John's two, and it would in mind if I got struck. But you just never know. I've got a question for

Josh, is it possible there's more lightning today than ever before? So most of the research I'm looking at, they're accounting for, you know, we've had lightning since the beginning of time. But obviously, with more talk of more storm activity and everything along those lines, I mean, we've had several hurricanes in recent years that had an uptick in lightning. And typically you didn't see that much lightning near the eye wall. So there is a little talk going around with research that I'm reading and everything that says that there is a little bit of an increase in lightning over the last decade as we're getting more storm activity. And obviously for some of us here in the south, it may not feel like it because we get storms all the time. But our atmosphere anywhere, Gulf Coast areas all the way up into central United States. When we get more storms, we see more of it.

but there is some research to indicate that there is an increase in lightning over the last decade or so. If you're waiting for the sky to fall, it sounds like there's an uptick of lightning in the world, and that's good to know. That dang turnpike song is one of my favorites. I'd now like to ask Josh if there are any other wives' tales about lightning that he'd like to debunk. So obviously the metal one, that one has stuck with me just because obviously, I mean, even today, people talk about, you know, metal is going to lead to lightning, that type thing. You know, standing under a tree means you're going to be safe. That's not the case. If lightning strikes that tree, you're going to be, you're going to be, you know, awfully close to that. Actually, I think one of the most, one of the most interesting ones I hear is if someone is struck by lightning, you cannot touch them because you're going to be awfully close to that. you're going to get electrocuted.

That's a wives tale. It's perfectly safe to, you know, assist them with medical treatment and stuff. It's not like you have to wait 30 minutes and then the charge goes away type deal. The other one, too, once you stop hearing the thunder in the middle of a thunderstorm,

it's absolutely over. We typically tell people to wait 30 minutes after you've heard that last lightning strike to make sure that there's not going to be that one last bolt. Oh, yeah. And then one of the ones that I hear is the debate of,

does lightning strike the same area? You know, there's a lot of people that they'll say it doesn't. There's a lot of people that say it does. I hate to break it to the people that say it doesn't strike twice. There's actually instances where lightning can strike the same area multiple times in a row. And I've actually seen videos where it can strike the same thing six times in a row. So lightning does strike twice, and it can actually happen more than twice in some locations. As it turns out, getting under a tree and a storm can be.

the worst thing that you can do because that tree is going to be the tallest thing around. Being shorter out in the open is better, even though that sounds completely ridiculous. And lying flat on the ground is a bad idea too, they say, or at least the internet says, because it opens you up to a stronger charge if lightning hits near you, like more your body is touching the ground. But that's exactly what I did when I got caught before daylight in a bad thunderstorm while slipping up shoeless on a big old gobbler. I threw my gun and laid flat on the ground with lightning cracking all around me. I call that story the lightning bird and ended up killing him

after daylight after the storm passed. But basically the best lightning advice you can get is to get the heck out of Dodge and into a building or car as fast as possible no matter what you've got to do. Josh said something earlier about the damage of all lightning strikes being unique. But what's also unique is how people respond to getting struck by lightning, which brings us back to where we started. Could lightning be used as a connector point to something bigger? Both Spence and John had unique things happen after the strikes. If you remember, the explosion caused Spence to flash back to war,

but he actually thinks it might have helped him. I'd actually done a good job. I thought I'd put it all behind me. So it just kind of like getting the last little bit out, you know. It didn't like, I didn't get hung up on it. It was just kind of interesting. It was still there. So you feel like it kind of purged some of that out?

Stuff that I didn't know was in there, you know. I mean, I'd done a good job of working on it and putting it behind me. But yeah, I guess there were still a little bit left to come out. So here is an interesting experience that John had. I remember like four or five days later when things started to calm down. I was thinking, I'm like, why? I was having this like, almost like a vision of a baby crying. And that's when I remembered when I woke up, the first time I woke up, getting shot out of a stand,

I heard a baby crying. And that's when I started to like open my eyes and realizing like, okay, what's going on? and I couldn't piece together why the baby was crying. And backstory, me and my wife, we've been trying to have a baby for the past, you know, nine months before then and with no luck. And then two weeks after the accident, we found out we were pregnant. So that I thought was a really beautiful part of the whole story, how, you know, through something that was traumatic and horrible, something beautiful kind of came out of it. Often in traumatic events, people remember more and more things about the second thing. surrounding the event as time passes.

While John was on the ground, out in the woods, he remembers hearing a baby crying. It's pretty unique. But, unfortunately, he never got his bear. Or he hasn't yet anyway. There's always next year. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece, for listening to Brent's This Country Life,

and for listening to Lakes Backwoods University. Please share our podcast with a friend. And if you know somebody that you think is prone to be struck by lightning, send this one to them. We really hope you enjoyed it. And as always, keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears look. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.