The Strangest Lightning on Earth
Credibility score: 67/100 — Mostly Credible. Mixed credibility - some claims are solid, others need verification.
BSmeter analyzed "The Strangest Lightning on Earth" and rated it 67/100 for credibility (a BS score of 33/100 — mostly credible), on 2026-06-09. Its weakest claim — "Only one plausible photo of ball lightning exists online" — scored 45/100 and was flagged as dubious. 18 claims were checked against the video transcript. Scores are produced by BSmeter's AI analysis of the transcript, not independent human verification.
Claims analyzed
Kansas Tesla coil hits 1.2 million volts, lethal — OK (60/100)
Voltage alone doesn't kill — current and path matter more.
Cars largely protect people inside from lightning via Faraday cage effect, but not perfectly — Solid (78/100)
The Faraday principle holds — cars do shield occupants — but the 'not perfect' caveat is the accurate part.
NHK Japan asked him to capture blue jet in 2022 — Personal Story (50/100)
Personal story, can't verify the NHK ask — sounds plausible though.
Captured blue jet in West Texas within 5 minutes of setup — Personal Story (50/100)
His story, his footage — timing sounds lucky but not impossible.
Horizontal lightning can stretch tens of kilometers — Solid (80/100)
Anvil crawlers and spider lightning do reach those distances.
WMO certified 829 km mega flash as new world record — Solid (75/100)
WMO does track lightning records — this one checks out but the transcript skips the exact date and source.
829 km equals Dallas to Kansas City distance — OK (60/100)
Straight-line distance is actually closer to 750 km — the driving route is longer, so the comparison is a bit loose.
Lightning can strike other lightning channels — Verified (85/100)
Documented phenomenon — the video even shows the moment the new leader connects to the old channel.
Sprites are red TLEs above storms, hard to photograph — Verified (90/100)
Textbook description — sprites are well-documented upper-atmosphere lightning and genuinely rare to catch on camera.
Lightning energy may have created amino acids and started life on Earth — OK (65/100)
It's a real theory but still unproven — abiogenesis research hasn't landed on lightning as the trigger yet.
Lightning definitely kills people and animals — Verified (90/100)
Yeah, that's not up for debate — lightning is a well-documented cause of death worldwide.
Smooth channel lightning is a rare type — OK (60/100)
Term exists in storm-chasing circles but it's not a formally standardized classification like CG or IC lightning.
Ball lightning has countless eyewitness reports — Solid (75/100)
True — hundreds of documented sightings exist even if scientists still argue about the mechanism.
Only one plausible photo of ball lightning exists online — Dubious (45/100)
Claims exhaustive search turned up just one photo — hard to verify when you're the one who did the searching.
No solid evidence of ball lightning despite global cameras — Dubious (50/100)
Says billions of cameras should have caught it by now — assumes ball lightning would look obvious on security footage.
Captured footage that could be mistaken for ball lightning — Personal Story (60/100)
Personal capture story — the humility of not hyping it is the actual point here.
Footage is actually a rolling-shutter artifact from a normal lightning strike — Solid (75/100)
Breaks down exactly why the footage looks weird — rolling shutter + transformer strike timing. Technical and specific.
Ball lightning might be imaginary like UFOs and ghosts — Opinion (50/100)
Rhetorical question comparing it to ghosts and aliens — framing, not a hard claim.
See the full analysis with sources and timestamps →