What was claimed
A person survived being struck twice in quick succession by lightning.
Our verdict
The theoretical survival chances, lack of news coverage and elements of the video which seem edited make it very unlikely that this happened.
It is unlikely this person got struck by lightning twice in quick succession
17 July 2019
A video showing a person surviving being struck twice by lightning has been shared thousands of times on Facebook. The footage has circulated the internet for a number of years, but despite numerous articles covering the apparently miraculous event, it is most likely that the video is fake.
The person in the video appears to receive two direct lightning strikes. Direct strikes are very rare: a person in the US’s chance of being struck by lightning over their lifetime is estimated at around one in 15,300 according to the National Weather Service in the USA, and they make up only about 3-5% of lightning deaths and injuries in developed countries. Direct strikes most often happen in open areas; the video shows the place in which the person is struck to be fairly built up.
It’s also very unlikely that someone who received two direct strikes in quick succession could get up and walk away as the video shows. Direct strikes have the most potential to be deadly. A bolt can heat the surrounding air to five times the heat of the sun’s surface, carries 100 million to one billion volts of electricity, and has a current of tens of kiloamperes—much more than is needed to kill a human.
Even if we accept there is some small theoretical chance a person could survive a double strike, there are other reasons to doubt the video. It would be assumed that such an event as someone surviving getting struck by lightning twice and it being caught on camera would generate news stories, unveiling new detail and perhaps leading to interviews with the individual. But searching the footage’s date or keywords provide no context, just reshares of the video.
The behaviour of the lightning in the video has also been contested, with some arguing that there are signs the video has been edited. We agree. If you compare the frame showing each "lighting strike" to the frame immediately before, you can see that the lightning doesn't seem to change which parts of the scene are most brightly lit, and doesn't even alter the shadow of the car cast by the light source coming from behind the camera.
All these points towards the video being fake.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false as the theoretical survival chances, lack of news coverage and elements of the video which seem edited make it very unlikely that this event happened.