Lightening gun
In a lightening storm when you see a big strike from ground to cloud or cloud to ground your eyes perceive it to be a single strike. In fact there are multiple strikes once the original one has taken place. The first strike sets up an ionized path that acts as a conduit for lower voltage charges that come from surrounding clouds that hop from cloud to cloud and then to the ground. Not all that different from these military experiments that are using a powerful laser to set up a conductive plasma. How much fun can that be anyway eh! Gotta have our toys to play with. Hang the cost, it's a military hobby.
