The odds of capturing a lightning bolt on a high-speed camera in the wild are probably pretty similar to getting hit yourself — slim to nil. So to vastly improve their chances, the slo-mo team at BBC Earth Productions visited the Morgan-Botti Lightning Lab in England, where the electrifying bolts are produced every day.
The lightning they create doesn’t streak across the sky in a graceful winding arc like they do outdoors, but their devastating power is still on full display here. Particularly when the crew decides to illustrate why sitting under a tree is a terrible idea, and we get to see a poor Bonsai utterly destroyed by 100,000 amps and 56,000 volts.