Lightning has no awareness of the odds (as far as I know). 
Close shave lightning strikes can leave a very lasting impression. Strikes during storms at Boy Scout summer camp one year taught us to stay out of the open. My lasting concern was further reinforced many years later by a strike to a utility pole not 30 yards from where we stood. That was close enough… thank you.
This is what you get when you picket Big Electric.
Or was he perhaps advancing on an enemy with intent to harm (however slowly).
Thunderbolt and lightening, very, very frightening me! [Galileo, etc.]
Johnny Galecki (Leonard on “The Big Bang Theory”) was struck by lightning while hiking, something David Letterman found fascinating on at least two of Galecki’s appearances on that show. If that happened to me, I’d be called “Sparky” for the rest of my life.
Back in younger days, working morning kitchen prep with a cook, the industrial dual HotPlate used to make 2 five gallon pots of soup discharged a blue electric bolt. It struck the door of the walk in cooler on other side of room leaving a noticeable dent. The cook shut off the break switch, unplugged the hotplate and declare, ǸO SOUP TODAY. Back in 1984 pre Sienfeld gag.
Seem the ground prong was removed from the plug as wall outlet ran 120 and only 2 holes. Hot plates were never cranked up, only simmering soups. The kitchen was all tiled floor and walls 6 feet up. Stainless steel tables had rubber shoes on all table legs and we walked on rubber mats. It is reckoned the hotplate built up a positive charge and closest ground was across the room walkin cooler which was grounded.
Striking man? What’s he on strike about, umbrellas?
partly carbonized, I expect.
Looks like he was in mid-step (one foot in the air) when it struck. If both feet had been on the ground he may have gotten a much bigger zap
Maybe the poles aren’t grounded?
guessing the strike was going for the key-chain maybe
but saved his life if he had pocketed them… 
Can confirm. Lightning hit a utility pole, perhaps 15m high just outside a large open door of a factory, through which I was watching the very heavy downpour. Loudest and most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard. I felt tingles, but might have just been the result of the after-burner sized dose of adrenaline my glands produced.
Seriously. I was quite impressed that I didn’t ship my pants.
A neighbor of mine narrowly missed being struck right in front of me. We were playing football in the yard, and it suddenly started raining a bit. We decided to finish the game anyway. There were trees about 20 feet away from us. During a play, my neighbor was running in an area near a tree, and I saw a narrow bolt just miss his heel. I skidded to a stop and yelled for everyone to go inside. Game over.
One summer day while mixing plaster in a mortarbox in a front yard there was a lightning strike perhaps a quarter mile (500m) away. At that instant, I happened to be looking at the gas meter about 10 ft away and maybe 2 ft above the ground. At a point where the pipe was angled up and then back into the meter, perhaps 2 inches wide, I saw a bright blue-white spark arc across the gap.
Lightning doesn’t just enter a point on the ground. The charge dissipates outward in concentric ‘ripples’ for a distance and as it encounters conductive materials, some charge can be carried even further. The voltage difference across those ‘ripples’ can be deadly. You needn’t be directly struck to be harmed. Never shower, for example, during an electrical storm.
First, he didn’t get struck, nor was he even close to the actual lightning strike. Look upthread to find out why. Second, if he had been struck, it wouldn’t matter in the least if he had one or both feet on the ground. His feet never got more than an inch or three from the ground, which is peanuts to the electrical potential of a thunderbolt.
As the video said , it probably struck about 50 feet from him. That’s quite close enough to get zapped from ground potential if both feet are on the ground. Think about it …lightning has a voltage of up to a billion volts. That dissipates as it moves across the ground concentrically, more slowly if the ground is wet. Even assuming that the potential difference goes to zero in an hundred feet, that’s still a billion/100 = a million volts per foot. That’s plenty enough to kill you if you span that foot gap. It’s the reason cows and other 4 legged animals get regularly killed by lightning even if it doesn’t strike them. It’s also why lightning in water can kill you a long distance from the strike.
That was Mother Nature saying “Keep off the grass”.
I came here to make a similar joke, but more along the lines of “I was skeptical but he is rather striking.”
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