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Lightning Struck Her Home. Then Her Brain Implant Stopped Working. (nytimes.com)
Can lightning have an impact on people with electrodes implanted in their brains? A new study shares a case study. From a report: Lightning had struck the building. But the appliances were not the only things affected. After about an hour, the woman, who had had the electrodes put in five years before to help with debilitating muscle spasms in her neck, noticed her symptoms coming back. When she went to see her doctors the next day, they found that the pacemaker-like stimulator that powered the electrodes had switched itself off in response to the lightning strike.
In a study describing these events published Tuesday in the Journal of Neurosurgery, her doctors suggest that physicians and medical device companies add lightning strikes to the list of things patients with electrodes implanted in their brains should watch out for. It may sound futuristic, but deep brain stimulation, or D.B.S., has a fairly long history. Surgeons operating on epileptic patients in the 1930s and 1940s found that removing small portions of the brain could quiet seizures. Later, researchers found that stimulating certain brain areas, instead of cutting them out, could quell the involuntary movements characteristic of Parkinson's and other disorders.
In a study describing these events published Tuesday in the Journal of Neurosurgery, her doctors suggest that physicians and medical device companies add lightning strikes to the list of things patients with electrodes implanted in their brains should watch out for. It may sound futuristic, but deep brain stimulation, or D.B.S., has a fairly long history. Surgeons operating on epileptic patients in the 1930s and 1940s found that removing small portions of the brain could quiet seizures. Later, researchers found that stimulating certain brain areas, instead of cutting them out, could quell the involuntary movements characteristic of Parkinson's and other disorders.
this story isnt about facebook so i dont know why its on slashdot
So her home was struck by lightning, and it fried everything, even some highly advance stuff implanted in her body. Do people not realize how much power in in a bolt of lightning? The woman is probably lucky her house didn't burn down, i know that homes have lightning rods and what not, but I've see some massive damage to homes that are struck.
Years ago I had a talking Stitch doll (from Lilo and Sititch) that you could "talk" to and it would respond to simple questions. You could turn it on by pressing a leaf switch in his ear or it would listen for voice commands directed to him. Very cool, geeky toy, left it on the shelf and the batteries died and he stopped talking.
Until one night, had a bad thunderstorm and a lightning strike very close to the house (less than a second between lightning flash and thunder) lights flickered, static on the TV...
Almost immediately after, Stitch, on the shelf, said "I'm having a pretty good day".
Cue twilight zone music.
Have physicians and medical device companies been recommending people in general seek out lightning strikes?
well it's a type of electrostatic discharge that makes EMP along with many other things including antimatter, light, x-rays, acoustic shock wave, etc.
A lot of these devices don't seem finished when you compare them to general consumer devices. I might forgive no security but often they handle error conditions incorrectly and don't even give an indication of a problem. For example radiation counters that say no radiation when their sensor becomes saturated. Or devices that will after a power interruption join the first network that they find and just wait for commands (802.15.4 medical monitors joining ZigBee meter networks). I've also seen devices that as far as I can tell where never tested in the real world before being used (pager based patient room transfer systems - besides no security and broadcasting your private information, pager uses a detect n and correct m error correcting algorithm where n=m, so if the bit error exceeds n then you get the wrong message with no indication)
EMPs?
Microwaves (as used in The Pentagons latest iteration of their recently revealed ray gun)?
Same question applies for pacemakers and no doubt more things as technology advances, we age and augment (Cybermen anyone?)
That's basically what lightning is.
They are similar but lighting has very limited geographical location and there are some significant characteristic differences in electrical and magnetic field variations.
EMP tends to be more about magnetic flux coupling. Lighting tends to be more about electrical fields. Of course, one kind of transient will bring along the other... But what couples best to the energy is totally different. What couples an electric field is kind of different than what couples well to magnetic fields.
Lighting and EMP are both high energy events that like to destroy equipment, but protection for lighting and for EMP are technically different exercises and require significantly different approaches.
So EMP isn't all that much "like lighting" though unprotected equipment won't care about the technicalities when it's destroyed by them.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I think the surprising thing about it to some people is that the device was not one that was plugged in, and yet it was still affected.
This should not be a surprise. Hospitals worry a lot about the EM radiation from mobile phones affecting their delicate medical instruments. I think most people would be aware that the EM emission from lightning is going to be a bit more powerful than your typical mobile!
Are they somehow protected form EMP from nearby lightening strikes? Turning of the pacemaker might not be too bad for the patient, though I don't know, but making it create other kinds of heart beat problems could be fatal.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Lightning Struck Her Home. Then Her Brain Implant Stopped Working.
You'll be amazed at what happened next!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
doctors suggest that physicians and medical device companies add lightning strikes to the list of things patients with electrodes implanted in their brains should watch out for.
Shouldn't everyone "watch out for lightning strikes?
Ken
Came here to comment the same. Glad to see everyone agrees.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Lightning is powerful. Even if you don't have electronics in your brain, or elsewhere in your body, you're still at risk of significant damage. I was struck by the stray side bolts of lightning. It shut me down and caused all my muscles to contract. My daughter and wife who saw it happened said that lightning bolts were shooting out of my hands. I have no memory of that. I remember my fists hitting my chest hard as my biceps contracted and my legs flexing so I tipped over. Other than that it was all whiteout for me. I was lucky. No lasting damage. I have a friend who has serious damage to his back, shoulder, arm and hand from when he got struck. He was outdoors. I was in the house. Being indoors doesn't protect you from lightning.
Lightning != lighting.
Privacy begins with
If you're the producer of an implant, would you rather want said implant, which manages some of a patient's muscles, when affected by nearby lightning strikes or defibrillator, to
A) malfunction
or
B) shut down
A could be potentially cause accidents, and in turn, lawsuits.
B might an annoyance to a patient, when they have to go have it reactivated.
I think they made a wise choice.
Privacy begins with
... but protection for lighting and for EMP are technically different exercises and require significantly different approaches. So EMP isn't all that much "like lighting"...
You appear to be talking about lightning entering equipment through a conductor. Under that assumption, what you wrote is correct. However, TFA appears to describe an event where the path of the lightning did not include the damaged equipment, so the damage can only be attributed to its EMP.
And yes, a nearby lightning strike does generate a potent EMP that is an important threat to nearby battery-operated equipment; I've experienced incidents myself, and there's more of that in different threads in this discussion. When I read TFA, my first reaction was: "well duh, something like this was bound to happen some time." Which of course doesn't excuse poor EMP (or, where applicable, surge) protection in safety-critical equipment.
Lightning Struck Her Home. Then Her Brain Implant Stopped Working.
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