Don't be Scared! Tesh Tuesday

There's No Need to Fear Spiders, Airplanes, or Lightning

When should you panic? When you see a spider? At the sight of lightning? On an airplane? Relax. Here are a few things that scare us, but shouldn’t. This comes from Real Simple magazine.

• The Itsy Bitsy Spider   Is that hairy thing going to jump off the wall and onto you any second now? Probably not. In the U.S. and Canada, there’s only one type of spider that’s capable of jumping – and it’s not found in houses. It’s found in the forest, and generally speaking, spiders don’t seek people out and attack them. If a spider does get on you – it’s only to crawl across you to get somewhere else. That’s according to Jonathan Coddigton, a curator of arachnids at the National Museum of Natural History.

• You’re outside during a storm and you’re afraid you’ll be struck by lightning if you carry an umbrella or a Blackberry. Meteorologist John Jensenius with the national weather Service says, relax. Metal doesn’t attract lightning. It conducts it. Even a lightning rod doesn’t attract lightning. People who are zapped while holding a golf club or carrying an iPod are just in the wrong place at the wrong time – and that’s anywhere outside during a thunderstorm. Carrying an umbrella won’t make you more likely to be struck.

•  The airplane’s engines suddenly get quiet after takeoff. Time to freak out? Nope, relax. According to AskThePilot.com, pilots use an abundance of thrust to get the plane off the ground, but once it’s aloft, they cut back on it. One reason is because the thrust isn’t needed anymore – another is due to noise regulations. So for all those people who clutch the armrest when the engines go silent – the plane isn’t dropping out of the sky. It’s simply not accelerating as much.

tesh.com