Surviving and using lighting strikes

Question

Character 1 has the ability to summon thunder strikes down on himself and has learned how to redirect them through the surface of his skin.

He uses a 25 kilograms 5 meters long metallic pole to call and to redirect the lighting. The pole looks like the classic military pole, thin and incredibly long but made entirely of metal.

You could see him raise one hand open in the sky and the very next millisecond his hair lifts up in the air and peddles tremble as a lighting will fall into his hand and then travel across his forearm, down to the bicep then the pecs and finally into the other arm traveling to the pole he is holding. With great strength he is capable of holding and pointing the pole with only one arm to redirect the lighting in the direction he is pointing the pole.

My question is

Can human tissue get used to getting electrocuted by lighting over many decades or would the lighting always open bleeding wounds the same way lighting splits down trees?

Answer 1

There seem to be several lightning injuries of varying severity. Humans can't withstand multiple strikes without long-term damage and death so you need to decide the level of reality you want.

If you are assuming some sort of resistance and a short term discharge, the worst damage would occur at the initial contact point and areas touching the pole or other metal items which heat up. Other than that, you would have damage under the skin which would heal within weeks but probably leave bruises from internal bleeding.

However, if you have a sustained arc touching flesh, you would expect it to eventually start cooking and burning it from the intense heat.

For reference, the main damage types are:

1. Arrhythmia and nervous system interruption from current. Most fatal.
2. Heat and electrical trauma. Burns and broken capillaries in tissue. Clears eventually. This is what you seem to be after.
3. Broken bones, ruptured ears and damaged lungs from heat and shockwaves
4. Muscle spasms and losing consciousness is extremely common.

Answer 2

Lightning burns are somewhat random and can be incredibly devastating. Trying to become immune is like sticking your hand in a fire and expecting every part of your body becoming immune to it if you only did it enough times. Lightning is dangerous, you need to survive the heat generated, the shockwave (loud sound) at point blank range and the electrical current messing up your nerves like your heart or even burning the nerves.

There is also a problem with where lightning comes from. The cloud sends out energy which will be "stepped", creating the zigzags of the lightning. As a rule of thumb each "step" will jump semi-randomly 60m, if anything on the ground is within that 60m distance the lightning bolt will earth there. Your character can apparently form that energy but will also need to control it.

Then when the step hits the grounded object most of the energy comes from the return lightning, which goes from earth up into the cloud. Your character would need to intercept the energy going up, diminishing the flash and bang. Then the character needs to aim the lightning and guide it to the target, even though this lightning really really wants to either use the lightning channel to go up into the cloud or straight back into the ground.

Frankly between forcing the cloud to create a lightningbolt, guiding it into the character himself, storing the lightning from both cloud and ground in himself and then guiding that to the target it is a small thing to say "oh and they are immune while guiding it".