Lightning Dodging Feats

## Summary

**NOTE: This page originates from the VS Battles Wiki and as such is their property and all credit for this page goes to them.**

**Lightning Dodging Feats** are perhaps one of the most common in all of fiction and so it is advised to check out this page for relevant information

## What is real lightning?

Most electricity in fiction is not as fast as real lightning. Often it is supernatural in nature, and is possibly not even electricity. Therefore lightning is only accepted as such under certain circumstances.

* Cloud-to-ground lightning is considered to be real lightning, as long there is nothing suggesting otherwise.
* For any lightning that isn't cloud-to-ground both of the following conditions have to be met:
	+ It is only considered as real lightning if it has demonstrated at a minimum a few properties that real lightning has. Some examples are: making muscles of affected beings contract, having an (electro)magnetic field, being shown to actually move with a speed similar to lightning, flowing through conducting materials, the character being able to manipulate real electricity or electromagnetism in general, generating ozone or causing electrolysis.
	+ The speed of real electricity can change due to a variety of factors, but for practical purposes, concerning attacks that are electricity-based, if they display power comparable to that of natural lightning, they should be considered to move at a comparable speed. It is required to show that the electricity carries an energy of at least 5 billion joules or a voltage of around 100 million volts in order to qualify.

## Scientific basis

The speed of lightning can vary mostly in the range of 1.0-14×105 m/s. For the purpose of calculating speed feats we use the average lightning speed of 4.4×105 m/s (Mach 1294), which is suggested by this study. Similar studies have found average speeds within the same order of magnitude, albeit lower.

The clouds that usually cause thunderstorms build about 200m to 4000m above the ground. In this wiki, 2000m is the standard assumption.

## Calculation

The calculation for the speed a character moves at when dodging/reacting to lightning is a very simple one.

## Cloud-to-Ground lightning

Based on the formula and scientific basis we can now make an estimation on which speed characters, that dodged cloud-to-ground lightning, should be placed at. We do that by inserting the distance
values and the speed values into the formula. For the distance the character moved we will assume one meter, as that seems reasonable. Should a character appear to have moved a lot more or a lot less than this, a separate calculation has to be made using the formula above.

## Non-Cloud-to-Ground lightning

Non Cloud-to-Ground lightning can be calculated with the same calculation mentioned above.

It should be noted that as long as the character or machine was not displayed creating cloud-to-ground lightning, it is questionable whether or not the lightning actually moves at average lightning speed, because the scientific knowledge on the speed of lightning is lacking in the current state of science, so that it is unknown which variables that could influence the speed.