It’s been an odd few days of lightning hitting unexpected things — namely animals — in concentrated patches. Yesterday, everyone was sharing the news of 323 reindeer that’d been killed by lightning on the mountain plateau of Hardangervidda in Norway. Earlier today, a story of 19 cows killed by lightning under a tree in Texas emerged. But all uncannily creepy things come in threes, of course, and it now seems this cycle of armageddon-y foreshadowing has reached completion: Resident Advisor first shared that famed Berlin power-plant-turned nightclub Berghain was struck by lightning this weekend. The air conditioning went off, as did the lights — but people just kept dancing. DJ T. — who was playing at the time at the upstairs bar — described on Facebook that they “took off their clothes because the place became a sauna. The air condition shut down completely, as almost all lights at the bar did… Never saw so many topless girls and boys in a club.” He’d begun his charged — literally — Facebook post with, simply, “Adrenalin is still running through my veins.” The rapture, it seems, starts at Berghain.
Meanwhile, Pär Grindvik, who played with Dax J in the downstairs space, told Pitchfork that the club’s “panic lights came on” — and they apparently stayed on for three hours. He says, “The reaction from the crowd including Dax and myself in the DJ both was that we thought it was a new light feature, but the lights stayed on while I took over the booth and were on for almost my whole set of four hours. Apparently the air conditioning also went off, so the club was extremely hot and humid, meaning the already lightly dressed crowd disrobed more and more as I played.” The fire department ultimately had to come to turn them off.
No news yet from meteorologists whether there’s a connection between the electrified cattle, electrified deer, and nude electronic music fans.