In Catching Fire, the second episode of the Hunger Games trilogy, one of the characters (Beetee) proposes a plan to kill some of the remaining tributes. He proposes wrapping a special wire that he has designed to withstand the vast energy of lightning around a tall tree and running it down to a salt water lake. Then when lightening strikes the tree (which it does predictably every twelve hours) anyone in the lake will be killed. (N.B. This is not Beetee's real plan, but it is the one he wants his allies to believe.)
I don't think his plan would work at all. Assuming that his wire can carry the enormous current delivered by a lightening strike (this is fiction after all) surely the current would short to ground through the salt water rather than taking a path through anyone standing or swimming in the water. The analogy I have in mind is that of birds standing untroubled on live electricity wires. They are unharmed because they do not provide a path to earth. But another analogy might be dropping a mains electric heater into a bath when you are in it. I think that kills you (though I'm not sure why.)
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