:It depends on how they died, where they died, what the weather was like when they died...
My first novel has a woman who is killed in a parking garage and not found for twelve hours. I set it in the middle of a freezing and dry January, making it so cold that her body would probably not have smelled too badly by the time it was found.
Now, if your person is killed in a hot, humid jungle I'd give them about two minutes to start reeking.
And yes, I imagine that if they died of a lightening strike they would smell burnt.
Here are some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning#Lightning_injuries
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd18jun99_1.htm
For more on rotting corpses, don't forget to check out the discussion from earlier this week :
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/001999.html
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited May 13, 2005).]
Granted I've never been to MD, but that one sure gave me pause.
Susan
Twelve hours after death, you can smell the dead smell. But the rotting smell won't have really gotten started if the temperature was in the 60's (Fahrenheit, I'm assuming, since Celcius would be pretty dang hot), particularly if the body were rained on for a few hours after death (rapid cooling, and water evaporation would carry away more heat when the rain was over). The dead smell is pretty subtle for a human nose. And it's not very offensive at all (unless you notice it coming from the flesh of a putatively alive individual). benskia's point has merit, it probably wouldn't smell as bad as a live body. The burnt smell is going to be a lot more noticible.
How noticible can vary a lot. But if it was a direct lightning strike, there's almost certain to be a charred entry wound and likely to be a good exit wound as well. That smell will overpower pretty much anything else. If the fatal strike was indirect (like it hit a tree the person was near or something like that) the fatal energy could have been just enough to induce fibrillation. So, no burning at all, no burnt smell, and it would take a skilled coroner and death scene investigation to be sure it was lightning. Particularly finding a wet body in the open in December, it would be very easy to assume death from exposure.
Maryland has thunderstorms any time the air is warm enough for liquid water, if it's over 40 degrees, you can have an electrical storm. 60 degrees in late December would be pretty unusual, but I think it's happened a few times. But that's ground temp, the air will be cooler by quite a bit, and the rain will come down at that temperature. You can have near-sleet falling on an otherwise fairly warm day, particularly near a city or large suburb (lots of those in Maryland).
So, adding my wet body variable, there could be almost no smell. Or there could be a lot of smell (charred human flesh smells incredible even in fairly small amounts).
The worst was were a dozen had sheltered under a tree- they all died from a strike. There was not a great burnt smell in any of the cows I had ever seen killed. But they did tend to decompose slower- as electricity is a method used to keep meat fresh- natural electricity had the same effect delaying rigor mortis by half a day at least. But within 16 hours they were stinking- two days they were creating a wretching stench. This was april so about 70 to 80 degrees.
This was in the eighties and maybe Lightning has been upgraded since then 
Jb Skaggs
As, Survivor said, yep. Maryland can have thunderstorms. Of course, what I failed to mention was the lightning is generated from a weapon.
I forgot to add a reminder... if you are considering an "intense lightning strike" to be a direct hit, keep in mind that an electrical arc, which a bolt of lighting is, is hotter than the surface of the sun.
People who survive lightning hits are generally not hit directly. They are usually just standing in proximity to something that takes a direct hit, ie a tree.
[This message has been edited by Elan (edited May 16, 2005).]
Nothing left? The guy absconded, along with the horse. That's the only possible explanation. Or, which is more probable, your cousin is a little less reliable than some.
As for a lightning weapon...well, maybe. But for weaponized purposes, a full fledged lightning strike is pretty inefficient. An electrical discharge sufficient to be highly lethal will still not produce significant burning.
quote:
The lightning stroke reaches temperatures of several tens of thousand degrees Kelvin, clearly sufficient to initiate combustion in many common materials. Indeed, when lightning current dissipates into the earth it often melts sand, creating glassy channels called fulgurites that can be tens of feet long. The cloud-to-ground voltage of thunderheads can be many tens of million volts, and the current in a lightning stroke can exceed 200 thousand amperes (>1000 times the typical household wiring capacity). When lightning strikes a building, it can cause internal electric fields in excess of 100 thousand volts per meter and can cause internal arcing across rooms. The energy released by a lightning strike can be of the order of 1010 Joules, more than the energy in 1000 gallons of gasoline or more than the energy of some bombs.
Some additional info on lightning strikes and people are listed here:
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd18jun99_1.htm
As for my cousin, she's completely honest and this was not a second-hand story; these were neighbors she knew. Consider the horse's horseshoes were made of metal and as such, a conductor of electricity. While total incineration would not be the most common result of a lightning strike, it is not an impossibility given the fact that lightning generates more power "than the energy of some bombs."
I cannot find any reference to lightning victims being vaporized or incinerated. And from what I've read, only a small fraction the total amount of power in a lightninmg strike actually goes through the victim.
Okay, alternative scenario. There was a lightning strike and the horse convulsed violently, throwing off its shoes and sending both horse and rider off a cliff or into a ravine where the flash flood washed the bodies away. That may sound like I'm stretching it, but the detail on the smell gives it away. When you vaporize a human body even partially, and even more so were you to vaporize a man and horse entirely, there is a hell of a stink. Also, there is usually one hell of a bang if the vaporization energy is all delivered in a few milliseconds. A tip for anyone using any weapon with a "vaporize" setting, don't use it at close quarters. Use "spatter" if you must, but be prepared for some messy consequences
I agree. As a cop-opt, its a "magical" weapon emited from a skycraft. I had a dream these crafts were chasing me one night...
I always thought that a person was safe in a car, if the car was struck by lightening. The chasse is supposed to divert the charge and keep the occupants in the cabin safe. But on the news not too long ago it shows a car that had experienced a direct lightening strike. The people survived... but I wouldn't call it safe. There was a gaping hole left in the windshield. The airbags deployed. It'll make me think next time I'm driving during a storm...