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Descriptions

As I mentioned before the main antagonist/villain of my story has the ability to control electricity. This electricity control is fairly powerful (think on the level of enel from one piece). As such this character has the ability to start lightning storms and aim/trigger the lightning bolts. The main problem is that the lightning lacks the power to do anything considerable to the superhuman characters who are able to withstand the blast from a tank. So this character decides that the best way to do damage to their enemies would be to turn the weak lightning bolt into a super strong lightning bolt that is dozens of times stronger than the strongest IRL lightning bolts.

Constraints

  • The reason this character is summoning lightning is because it is untraceable so for example if I shoot a lightning bolt at Mr punch face and his friends I'm gonna get jumped but if I summon it he cant find me and I can just spam lightning bolts eventually killing him.
  • The characters electricity manipulation has a range of 1 km.
  • They can use their electrokinesis to mimic powers like pyrokinesis, telekinesis, photokinesis, flight/super speed, and mind control.
  • The max amount of volts and amps they can generate is about 1 billion volts and 300,000 amperes.
  • They can teleport electricity into things (that are not living)
  • They can use plasma and precise control to create wires and electrical circuits.
  • The lightning should be about 20 times more powerful to injure superhumans.

Things that I do not think will work

  1. Pumping a large amount of current into the lightning wont work due to their reaction time being unable to track lightning.
  2. Also, adding voltage will decrease current.
  3. Making the channel of lightning narrower to increase how much gas is heated and how intense the shock wave and heat is might work but unless they set it up in advance they wont be able to do it to an already existing bolt.
  4. Making a capacitor would probably work but I haven't researched that yet.
  5. Causing a large number of lightning bolts to cluster up would work but it would be noticeable to Mr. Punch face and his friends.

Question itself

So how can a powerful electrokinetic cause lightning to be powerful enough to harm superhumans who can tank a normal lightning strike.

(sorry for the long question)

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  • $\begingroup$ Increasing voltage only reduces current in systems where power consumption is constant, it does not hold in electrical surges such as lightning strikes, much less if you're magically changing their intensity or voltage. However, afaik lightning strikes once the voltage differential between cloud and ground reaches a certain threshold, so "increasing the voltage" of a cloud will make it strike earlier, not "bigger" $\endgroup$
    – user105535
    Commented Oct 2 at 16:51
  • $\begingroup$ Lightning comes in several flavors. Most commonly there is cloud to ground negative discharge. Rarely but carrying more current is CG positive and is believed to be responsible for most damaging instances of strikes. a typical bolt carries ~300 million volts. There is however a rare type called, creatively, a superbolt, that can carry 1000X as much voltage. earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148933/… $\endgroup$
    – Gillgamesh
    Commented Oct 2 at 17:10
  • $\begingroup$ How loud is the shockwave of a superbot and what is the amperage of it? $\endgroup$
    – Coolcats112
    Commented Oct 2 at 17:37
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    $\begingroup$ Your question is tagged magic and super-powers. What kind of answer are you looking for? Your either must draw from a larger pool of power or you must increase the flow (the "pipe size") of the power. That's a function of your super power design. It frankly sounds like you're looking for a MacGuffin as if it were a legitimate solution. What's stopping you from giving the character "one of the Gems of the Oracle Magdor," which allows the character to channel more electricity? $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Commented Oct 2 at 18:49
  • $\begingroup$ First you're gonna want a really big glass rod, and a really big bit of cloth. $\endgroup$
    – Pelinore
    Commented Oct 3 at 2:56

2 Answers 2

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A lightning is basically a discharge between two charged regions, similar to the discharge in an overloaded capacitor.

If you want to increase the discharge you can either:

  • move the regions further away
  • increase the dielectric constant of the medium

In both cases you will need an higher charge accumulation that will then flow in the lightning.

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P=VI

So the amount of power you can deliver is equal to your voltage times your current. Everything will heat up given enough current. Though an argument could be made for super conductors, but those need to be cooled artificially anyways. So dump more current into the target and eventually they will melt.

As an alternative use Fusion

Fusors use an electrostatic potential (voltage drop) to accelerate ions and fuze them. The result is gamma ray bursts and energetic nuclei. If your hero can make electrostatic fields, he can fuse matter out of literal thin air. If you do this in enough volume, you can hit someone with a gama ray burst that will strip them down to atoms.

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