On the cynical end of this trope, lightning strikes can actually cause personality changes due to nervous system damage.Įlectrical shocks to save a life come from a Magical Defibrillator. and since the interaction of most matter is the interplay of electromagnetic fields, someone who can do that can do anything, using Hollywood logic. Further, since electricity and magnetism are directly linked, a character who, for example, can shoot lightning should also be able to wreak havoc with magnetic fields. There is a grain of truth in all the mythic reverence, since electrical shock can help (relieving depression, regulating heart and muscle rhythm), hinder (causing brain damage, stopping the heart), and often really, really hurt, all by a matter of degree. Symbolically, the notion of lightning as a magical force stems from the ancient belief associating it with the power of the gods it's a convenient and spectacular visual shorthand for 'and then a miracle happens'. Look in nineteenth-century Sears and Roebuck catalogs, and you're liable to find ads for actual electrified girdles, which tout the supposed health benefits of close proximity to a constant electrical flow. Naturally, these mystical properties extend to lightning in its 'harnessed' form: electricity. Perhaps the most amazing thing is, not only will lightning never destroy any machine, frequently it will cause a machine to malfunction just once, then return to normal behavior as if nothing happened, a super-condensed form of No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup, as nobody is sure what it did and it can't be made to do it again. If you're in a teleporter when it's struck by lightning, two of you might turn up at the other end if your stun ray is struck by lightning it may turn into a volatile disintegration gun if your radio is struck by lightning it could start channeling the dead, and so on, and so forth.Īnd God help you if you perform any kind of experiment during a thunderstorm all you need is for the building to get struck by lightning and you'll have some kind of malevolent radioactive cloud on your hands even if your experiment had nothing to do with radioactivity or at the very least you'll gain freakish superhuman powers.

Basically, fictional lightning is a Mad Scientist with the ability to fundamentally redesign any machine, especially a futuristic one.

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