Worldbuilding

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What happens when lightning strikes a flying island? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I say "flying" instead of "floating" to differentiate what i'm talking about from islands that float on the sea (like Delos).

My world's flying islands are made of a kind of coral that grows up to tens of kilometers in size, usually smooth on the bottoms and with plant life on top, mostly from seeds left there by birds. The polyps excrete a gas lighter than air that keeps the colony afloat.

Islands drift with the wind and bob up and down as the coral gets dehydrated from being above the clouds and some of it dies, reducing lifting gas production and making the island sink until it becomes healthier again.

Today i wondered, what would happen if lightning struck one of these? What little i've read about lightning hitting airplanes and animals leads me to believe it wouldn't be great for the coral, but i'd love to hear what people who might know more about these things think.

Would the strike be less impactful with no ground current? Would the coral have to develop a way to avoid stormy areas? Would these things just being less conductive than air be enough to protect them, or would they need to develop something like a Faraday cage to be safe in a storm?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Lightning would probably be bad for any organism but thankful, on whatever planet things your corals are on, the gas is an excellent conductor which safely directs the lighting around and though the coral, creating amazing light shows.

Sadly though, if one gets close enough to the ground and there's not enough gas production, errant strikes can happen, leading to at least one tragic event in the past - since that time, dwellers on any coral are diligent about watering their... Yard? And have either magical or physical parachutes if they're particularly well off. Larger colonies have taken to drilling a lightning rod though the whole comet (I dunno, sounded like a good name) but this has felled more than one, so settlers need to find really good specimen for that procedure - A strike of dry coral, due to the air gaps in the structure, can engulf an 80 sq. km island in under 8 hours, so any colony without active protection is more nomadic and less 'earthly possessions' than other tribes because when the bell rings, you go or you die.

Pyroanthropology is a passion of mine, so this was a fun thought experiment. I'd imagine if the civilization was industrialized enough, they'd be trying to harvest and utilize the power but I could also see them becoming a siege weapon, essentially a flaming shot you could drop on your enemies heads.

Edit: Forgot to add, due to the conductive nature of the gas, residents would need to stay inside during storms or go out wearing essentially gimp suits worth of rubber - so emergency services would look really funny.