Strike You’re Out!

The idea of a human being,being killed by lightning seems like a fear for some at a young age, you sit back listening to the thunder in the distance, and wince as you see a flash of light out of your bedroom window thinking “wow that could have killed me…” It’s one of those childhood fears that are nearly unreasonable, while obviously lightning is a real threat, you have a 1 in 3,000 chance of being struck in your lifetime (living in the U.S.), and of that very low chance, only 10% of lightning strike victims actually succumb to their injuries and die. So needless to say it’s pretty rare to know someone or see someone pass from a lightning strike.

In sports it’s always been tradition to seek shelter whenever a severe storm breaks out, and mandatory across all outdoor sports to seek shelter whenever lightning is seen, or thunder is heard, such as a Texas Rangers and Minnesota Twins baseball game in 2012 that was halted after a strike of lightning sounding similar to that of a large bomb sent players sprinting off the field and those in the upper deck scrambling for cover below. Needless to say standing in an open field with pieces of metal and objects in hand doesn’t appeal to someone attempting to avoid one of those 5,000+ degree strikes.

But in October of 1998 a small football (soccer) game in the Democratic Republic of the Congo wasn’t yielded quite in time before lightning struck, when it did it took down nearly 50 people total, a handful of people from pure shock and fright, but many (nearly 30) were injured from things such as burns and blown eardrums, but one of the two teams faced a very severe statistic, as 11 players from the away team (name unknown) was killed in the strike. Shockingly no home players were killed or severely injured. Many suspected cardiac arrest to the reason behind the deaths. Popular storytelling and general rumor believed some sort of witchcraft was behind the strikes and that a spell was put on the away team, of course this is near impossible as no evidence of with craft or curses actually working exist. Personally I feel very mixed about this entire event, as an act of witchcraft seems laughably impossible. But at the same time, an entire team getting killed or injured while the other go unscathed seems just a tad bit too coincidental.