More Awesome Than You!

I have taken all trees except the fruit trees in greenhouse off of my lots. The flashes of lightening scare me to death and then fire follows on any lot trees. I am from Northern California and I am ready for earthquakes but that blast of lightening and fire is something we don't have here, thank goodness.

If anyone comes across a site with fireproof trees, please post it here.

Thanks. Good Simming,
Twink

Twink, I don't know that fireproof trees will help you that much.  The lightning will hit anything that's outside.  I've had it hit a telescope and a yard light, to name two things.  It will also hit the house -- I've had it hit the roof many times, and the porch railing.  And I've had it just hit the ground.  Seems like what you really need is a hack that disables lightning.

Don't feel you're alone -- I jump when there's a lightning strike, too  :D   The fires used to really panic me, but I've discovered that as long as it keeps raining, the rain will put the fire out.  I did have two occasions where it stopped raining right after the strike and I had to call the fire department.

You might want to avoid using the decorative trellis.  That item seems to be causing "invisible fires" when it gets struck.

And with Seasons, you don't have to cheat to put fire alarms outside.

According to the California Department of Forestry the five year average for fires caused by lightning worked out to be about 288 fires per year. So it's definitely something we have here (I live in Northern CA too), usually we don't see it happen and instead see all the news stories of the CDF desperately trying to get the fire contained and put out. I grew up in the Sierra Nevada mountains so every year from May-October I was always a bit on edge. I still get edgy about it eventhough now I live in the central valley. But I do know what you mean. The first time I heard the lightning in the game I nearly jumped out of my chair. It sounds so realistic and in real life I hate lightning. I have gotten more used to the sound now so I don't jump as much as I used to. You might get more used to it over time as well or like Phyllisp mentioned a no lightning hack may help you. Numenor at MTS2 made one- http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=228276

Numenor's hack just removes the light effects, not the actual lightning.

Doh! Silly me. I should have read that much more carefully. Thanks for pointing it out to me Jordi.  :D

I just started a thread about this in Oops! You Broke It!  I'm pretty peeved that the patch did not fix this problem.

Linky here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8864.0.html

Lightning rod?

I still have occasional fires on lots with lightning rods. Do we need to use more than one?  :-\

Does the rod even do anything? It looks to be decorative only.

I'm pretty sure lightning does strike the rod, and I think it's inflamable.
Not sure if there's anything more to it than that.

Yeah, but all items are susceptible to lightning strikes and are flammable. I don't have any reason to believe the TS2 lightning rods attract lightning any more than other objects do.

Unless the code has changed (and I don't think it has), lightning can be mitigated by up to 5 rods. I forget what the exact percentages are, but it's something like 55 to 70% likelihood of hitting the rod instead of something else.

"inflammable" means the same thing  as "flammable."  It does appear to be fireproof, though.

Oh, so they do have a purpose? Thanks dizzy.

God, I need coffee.
Of course I meant unflamable.
Now I've managed to confuse myself, what's the correct word for something that doesn't catch fire?

nonflammable

That's dull.  We need a more spectacular word.

Do english have a word like "ignifugé" in french ? something that could sound like ignifugated or something ?

dictionary.com's thesaurus is naff, but it lists 'incombustible' as a synonym for nonflammable and I kinda like the sound of that. (It also lists 'concrete', but I'm pretty sure incombustible actually means 'won't burn')

'Ignifugé' just sounds like 'ignited' to me, and that's pretty much the opposite. But I have to go to dictionary.com for synonyms, so... @_@

Trees seem pretty self-extinguishing to me. I've always had the tree go out on its own. It doesn't even seem to negatively affect its health to be on FIRE. In any case, it's nothing to worry about. At least now there's a sensible reason why something is on fire, instead of the infamous Molotov Toaster Pastry.

I had a tree burn to a pile of ash on two separate occasions when it stopped raining directly after the strike.  The third time it happened I was able to get the fire department there in time to save it.

And once in real life I had a kitchen fire due to an unattended frosted toaster pastry in the toaster.  Those suckers can BURN!

What about the trellises, though? Or are we just to avoid using the darn things? (And which object(s) exactly are affected by the buggy invisible fire problem, again?)

and by trellis you mean that fence-with-bedflower pre-order gift for seasons, right? How does it get glitched? I have used these on several occasions and didn't notice anything unusual...

No, the trellis in question came with University.  Unlike the Seasons preorder, the game considers the University trellis a tree.  Unfortunately, Maxis neglected to create an animation for this "tree" catching fire after it is struck by lightning.  Soooo, when it is struck by lightning, it causes invisible fires which spawn errors and create all sorts of problems.

I think the Uni trellis is in build and the Seasons trellis is in buy, right?

Yes.

And I never use the Uni Trellis and now I know why.

As for the OP jumping, we're in a club, I think.  It isn't a very exclusive one, though.  I jump clean out of my chair every time.

Of course, we've been having daily thunder/lightning storms here lately in real life, and they make me jumpy, too.

This could be due to the fact that I've been narrowly missed by lightning 3 times in my life... and was in a house struck by lightning once. So maybe my jumpiness is justified?

Being paranoid doesn't mean that they really AREN'T out to get you... :)