Flash/Bang Method

For those of you who thought so, the flash/bang method here is not talking about a weapon. I'm in first aid class and they're lecturing about the importance of avoiding lightning injuries. After seeing lightning, then count until you hear corresponding thunder. Each 5ish seconds is a mile. Once the count has reached a frequency of 30, you should already be inside. Thinking back over my past, I have to say I've been in some crazy unsafe situations (like 2 summers ago when the lightning hit while the thunder blasted my ears - probably a little close... since I lost my vision and fell over.). However, 30 seconds seems like some severe overkill. I've felt perfectly safe down to 5-6 seconds.

Anyhow. Of related interest is the fact that this year Westerville put in lightning alarms at their parks. I think that's a pretty cool idea, and will be interested to see sometime how that works firsthand. But apparently it alerts parkgoers when the risk of lightning strike is high. Pretty cool.