Heh, I’m going to submit this to George Hrab for his “Indestructible Bastards” segment.
A lot of them are lone survivors of plane crashes. This would make a nice change of pace.
Roy C Sullivan
7 times
Sounds like he’s a grounded individual.
Rod is one smokin hot dude - twice.
What does he do for a living? He works on a train… as a conductor.
If Mr. Wolfe lost some weight, or if his suntan faded, he’d be a lightening Rod.
Good thing his name wasn’t Cliff Dyver.
What are the odds?
According to Wikipedia, the mortality rate of being struck by lightning is 10%-30%, and the chances of being struck in any given year is about 1 in 700,000.
So, if we’re going to assume that being struck once and surviving doesn’t change your chances of surviving if struck again (terrible assumption, since getting struck fucks up everyone badly, there are no uninjured survivors) we can calculate being struck and surviving twice.
The first time he was struck and survived, the odds were conservatively 1 in 7 million. Best case? 1 in 2.333 million.
The second time? 1 in 49 trillion, to 1 in 5 trillion? I think I got my math wrong… Anyway, here it is:
Initial survival:
((1/700000) * 0.1)^(-1) gives 1 in 7,000,000
((1/700000) * 0.3)^(-1) gives 1 in 2,333,333
Survival of two strikes
((1/7,000,000)^2)^(-1) is 49,000,000,000,000
((1/2,333,333)^2)^(-1) is 5,444,442,888,889
I’ve probably messed up. Wanna calculate those odds 
I think I’ve only calculated it for being struck twice in the same year…
According to howmanyofme.com, there are roughly 300,000 people called Rod in the USA. That further reduces the odds of a person called Rod being double-struck by 10^3, no?
I looked up some more numbers too. The life-time likelihood of being struck by lightning is 1 in 3000 according to Natty G, so this’ll give better results, since the two lightning strikes for this guy were 18 years apart.
Let’s do it again:
((1/3000 * (300000"Rods" / 320,635,715Pop. US) * 0.1)^2)^(-1) = 1 in 1,028,072,617,335,611
And
((1/3000 * (300000"Rods" / 320,635,715Pop. US) * 0.3)^2)^(-1) = 1 in 114,230,290,815,068
So… Pretty rare?
These odds seem too small though. By the look of them, NOBODY would be struck twice by lightning and survive both times. And it just gets worse if you’re looking for “Rods” getting struck twice in their life, and surviving both times (unsurprising). But… I still think I’ve messed up… Assuming getting struck by lightning is an independent event, and getting struck once doesn’t change your odds of getting struck generally…
If any math people are grinding their teeth looking at my work, please correct me. How else will I learn?
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