A bizarre case of mass carnage erupted on a mountain in the country of Georgia earlier this month when a single lightning bolt killed an astounding 550 sheep.
The jaw-dropping incident reportedly unfolded in the community of Ninotsminda on August 9th when a thunderstorm passed over the area.
Shortly thereafter, rancher Nikolay Levanov was informed by his sheepherder that a lightning bolt had wiped out a whopping 100 of the animals.
Upon investigating the matter, the man was stunned to discover that an additional 450 sheep, which belonged to other farmers in the area and were grazing on the mountain at the time, were also killed in the bizarre weather event.
A nightmarish video from the aftermath of the storm shows a slew of the downed sheep scattered across the mountaintop as bewildered observers look over the haunting scene.
Fortunately, the sheepherder was able to survive the incident with only minor injuries, but the farmers who lost livestock were, obviously, not so lucky.
They are now hoping that local officials can somehow help to offset the enormous financial losses they will incur from the event.
While incredibly rare, such incidents of lightning wiping out large numbers are animals are not entirely unheard of as, back in 2016, over 300 reindeer were killed in a similarly shocking event in Norway.
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Interestingly, both of these freak incidents took place after the US Army developed a Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) to fire a laser guided lightening bolt at a target.
In 2012, US Army scientists developed a weapon which could fire a laser-guided lightning bolt at a target(s). The Laser-Induced Plasma Channel (LIPC) is designed to hit targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them. George Fischer, lead scientist on the project, said: “We never got tired of the lightning bolts zapping our simulated [targets].” Details of the weapon were released on the US Army’s website. Mr Fischer explained how the usually unpredictable lightning bolts can be controlled.
“If a laser puts out a pulse with modest energy, but the time is incredibly tiny, the power can be huge,” Mr Fischer said. “During the duration of the laser pulse, it can be putting out more power than a large city needs, but the pulse only lasts for two-trillionths of a second.”
This means, Mr Fischer said, the air could be manipulated to “act like a lens“. “We use an ultra-short-pulse laser of modest energy to make a laser beam so intense that it focuses on itself in air and stays focused in a filament,” he said.
Fifty billion watts of optical power are used. By comparison, a typical filament lightbulb uses 100 watts of power. “If a laser beam is intense enough, its electro-magnetic field is strong enough to rip electrons off of air molecules, creating plasma,” Mr Fischer said. “This plasma is located along the path of the laser beam, so we can direct it wherever we want by moving a mirror.” The team said it faced a challenge in making the technology rugged enough to survive in harsh battle conditions. (BBC)
In a shocking video from early August 2020, what some say is a powerful Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) was used to destroy a Shanghai high-rise build that was under construction. The state-run Chinese media are saying it was a natural lightning strike.
Could this explain the unusual phenomenon of 550 sheep killed by lightening?
