When lightning strikes, for a violent second, ordinary life explodes. Usually it's 1 or 2 a year. Of the 18, only 1 died. Reporter Ira Glass talked to the survivors about the moment of impact. The people who took the worst hits are the ones who remember the least about it.
Doctors say electricity wipes the short term memory out of their brains.
One woman doesn't remember waking up, eating breakfast, leaving the house, anything that happened the day she was struck. Other lightning victims can't remember the moment of impact because they were knocked unconscious by the blast. Larry Wilson, for example. He was struck, along with his golfing partners, standing under an umbrella, out on the course. And when lightning struck I felt no pain.