The Top 100 Things I'd Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

Grounded?

It's a safety precaution for doomsday devices which run off electricity, but not really relevant to you.

Even if it won't come up, I still want to hear about it; this is fascinating to me.

I'd generally associate electric doomsday devices with the sky, like the Cloud Castle of the Storm King.

Why do you want them on the ground instead?

Similar to how heat wants to move from hotter places to colder places until everything is the same lukewarm temperature, electricity wants to move from places with a lot of electricity to places without much electricity until everything has the same low charge. Especially, electricity wants a path to the ground, because the ground can absorb and disperse a lot of electricity. If there's room for something or someone to get between the electricity and the ground, it might move through them to get there.

Huh.

I guess that makes sense of why storms shoot lightning bolts down at us instead of up into the sky above and in all directions, which is a question I never thought to ask.