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September 26, 2014
Q. What's the point of crouching on the balls of your feet like a baseball catcher if there's no ballgame in sight?
A. It'll get your body as low as possible while keeping most of it off the ground, says Lucas Reilly in Mental Floss magazine. The point here may just be your survival, if you're caught in a storm and are about to be hit by lightning. Now the ambient electrical charge may make your skin tingle and your hair stand on end — a dead giveaway! Dead wrong is the old notion — oft repeated — that “the best thing you can do is lie down flat.” Experts recommend the crouch position with heels together, creating “a circuit for the charge to travel, allowing the bolt to ride up one foot, down the other and back into the ground — rather than coursing through the rest of your body.”
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