It is not just a direct hit that is worrisome. Through its charge, lightning can harm any creature within a fifty-metre radius of the strike point. We can also be harmed collaterally, by getting knocked off our feet by the percussive force or walloped by a struck tree. We cannot outrun it — lightning comes to earth at an estimated 220,000 kilometres an hour — and we cannot dress for it, as a bolt reaches temperatures of 28,000 degrees. We can only hide.
