BOLT Engineering Fair Background Research

During the 2006 - 2016 study conducted by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), there were 352 lightning-related fatalities. Of these, 64% of deaths occurred during leisure activities, 16% occurred during the victims daily routine, 15% took place during work, and 5% were unknown. The area that I am focusing on is leisure, which contributed a total of 225 recorded deaths. Within this category, the dominating activities are sports (14%) and various water-related activities (34%).

Water-related activities, which includes fishing, boating, relaxing at the beach, and swimming, make up a substantial part of leisure-related deaths. The activity with the greatest amount of recorded fatalities is fishing, with 33 deaths (43%); then there is relaxing at the beach with 20 deaths (26%); boating with 16 deaths (21%), and swimming with 7 deaths (9%). The other dominate activity is sports, which includes soccer, golf, running, baseball, football, and disc golf. Soccer is the most dangerous sport to play in a storm, there were 12 recorded deaths (39%); then in accordance with the popular urban myth that golf is also extremely dangerous, 9 golf related deaths (29%); 5 deaths occurred while running (16%); 3 occurred while playing baseball (10%); 1 death occurred while playing football (3%) and 1 death occurred while playing disc golf (3%).