A Texas teenager discovered the hard way that Mother Nature doesn’t care about your kill-death ratio, after getting struck by lightning while playing video games in his own bedroom.
The young gamer was minding his business, presumably doing something heroic and pixelated, when lightning decided to crash his session without so much as a friend request. The bolt struck the teen while he was inside his home — a place most of us naively consider a safe haven from the sky’s more aggressive mood swings.
To be fair, Texas storms have never really respected the concept of personal boundaries. The Lone Star State is part of what meteorologists cheerfully call “Flash Alley,” a region that sees some of the most frequent and intense lightning activity in the entire country. So while the rest of us assume that being indoors means we’ve successfully outsmarted the atmosphere, Texas lightning looks at your roof and sees more of a suggestion than a barrier.
Lightning can enter homes through wired connections — including electrical systems, plumbing, and yes, the very cables snaking behind your entertainment setup. Surge protectors, it turns out, are named rather optimistically.
The teen survived the shocking interruption (pun absolutely intended), which is genuinely the most important part of this story. Authorities and weather safety experts have taken this opportunity to remind everyone that during electrical storms, it’s advisable to avoid contact with corded electronics, plumbing, and anything else that might give lightning a convenient on-ramp into your living situation.
So next time a thunderstorm rolls in, maybe take the hint from the universe, put down the controller, and read a book. A physical one. Made of paper. Unplugged.
Game over — temporarily.
Source: Houston Chronicle
Original story via Reddit Offbeat
