Scientists have found that thunderstorms are more radioactive than previously thought (2 photos + 1 video)
I have a new scare tactic from scientists! Put global warming aside, forget about ozone holes, it has long been out of fashion. Now decent society should be afraid of radioactive thunderstorms. 
The longer modern humanity lives, the more incomprehensible it is how its ancestors survived for thousands of years. Probably because they did not climb into thunderclouds.
Scientists were put in a modernized NASA U2 spy plane and sent to fly over active thunderstorms at an altitude more than twice as high as commercial aircraft.
They have been flying there since 2017. With breaks, on different planes, but it was the U2 that managed to cram all the necessary equipment. This allowed them to conduct unprecedented observations of gamma radiation from thunderstorms.
After experiencing and studying, a group of scientists came to the conclusion that thunderstorms are much more radioactive than previously thought, and regularly produce gamma rays - a high-energy form of electromagnetic radiation. In fact, thunderclouds are the most energetic natural particle accelerators on Earth.
The phenomenon is not only common, but almost universal during large tropical thunderstorms, according to two new studies published in the scientific journal Nature.
Electrons are accelerated to speeds close to the speed of light by huge electric fields — the equivalent of 100 million batteries — inside thunderclouds. When these electrons collide with air molecules, they can produce gamma rays, other radiation, and antimatter. The resulting energy can be 10 to 20 times greater than the energy of natural background radiation.
Every second, lightning strikes the Earth 45 times, and at any given time, there are more than 2,000 thunderstorms going on.
Apparently, following radioactive thunderstorms, radioactive rain falls on the earth, after which radioactive mushrooms grow. Well, you get the idea.
