All things equal would you rather...

**Mountain Gout** · 08-15-2011, 06:11

Originally Posted by Aardvark

Lightning??? Give me a hammock. If it goes bad, already half way to heaven!

Plus one..

**EnglishBob** · 08-15-2011, 07:26

Hammock - bes to hang in hammockey hevean

**Jsaults** · 08-15-2011, 08:43

lightning-struck tree to the ground.

But I have come to believe that when the ground spike is taken into account it is safer to be in a hammock than a tent. My hypothesis is that the ground spike will travel up the tree to the sky more readily than through the hammock. Same with the return bolt. Of course, if the tree explodes one is going to be showered with wooden shrapnel. But a tent would be subject to that as well.

So, considerng this and a hammock's advantages when water is flooding the ground, I will always choose a hammock.

Jim

**Crawldaddy** · 08-15-2011, 08:53

doesnt matter.. I was on a bald at Shining Rock Wilderness 2 nights ago in a huge lightening storm. I says, "Tonight.. is a good night to die".

obviously it wasnt my time yet

**KerMegan** · 08-15-2011, 09:10

Might get a less biased sample if you asked this question over at White blaze or backpacking-light..not slamming you, but this audience/sample is kinda pre-selected to favor hammocks. Just a thought.
KM(who also favors hammocks for storms, for most of the above reasons..))

**Swamp_Stomper** · 08-15-2011, 09:22

Hammock---- one of the main reasons I went with a hammock was an experience during a heavy rain storm. Out of 14 hikers the only one to stay dry was the woman in the hammock. Laying in a tent in a puddle of water you're just begging to be electrocuted.

**Cannibal** · 08-15-2011, 09:37

Hammock; no-brainer.

**Catavarie** · 08-15-2011, 09:42

Had a string of thunderstorm roll through last night, and crazy me I ran outside and setup my tarp and hammock. Great night of sleep. And definitely prefer hammock.

**cardo** · 08-15-2011, 10:28

I'm out here on the Left Coast where lightening isn't a daily occurrence but they do teach us not to seek shelter under a tree in a lightening storm. My sister's house had two 80' tall redwood trees about twenty feet apart that were struck one night. On the sides of the trees facing each other was a strip about three inches wide where all the bark had been blown off of the tree from as high up as we could see to down into the ground. The dirt was blown out of the ground down two feet along roots that went from one tree towards the other. A hammock would have been in the center of all this and we thought at the time anything hung there would have been nothing but cinders.