Not being a weather-wise person, I am wondering if a house made from a shipping container will be a problem in thunder and lightning storms. What happens to the occupants of a container house if lightning strikes it while the occupants are inside? Are they in an danger? Will the container act as a lightning rod?
Actually, it might be safer in a steel enclosure. If my hazy high school science serves me, it acts as a Faraday shield, conducting the electricity safely down the outside without affecting the contents. Don't take my word for it, though!
I believe that too. Just like a metal roofed vehicle is safer than out in the open. That said I would want to have the metal electrically connected to a good grounding system. And I would install air terminals (lightning rods) on the roof. The rods, connected to ground, can actually bleed static charges in the atmosphere before a strike happens. This ground is separate fromany grounding provided for the power circuits.
As long as the shell is properly grounded, I wouldn't expect to have any real problems with lightning. That said, lightning doesn't behave by normal electricity rules. There is so much energy in a lightning strike that it is very difficult to predict the damage of a direct hit. I have four buildings on a three acre site that have electricity. My distribution system includes four power poles plus my meter pole. I had a direct lightning hit on one of my outlying poles. I know this because 1/3 of the pole was lying in the yard 50 feet away. Evidently, lightning vaporized moisture in the pole and caused it to explode. I have a whole house surge arrestor on each of my buildings and the only damage was to a battery charge controller and CD/FM Stereo in a trailer connected to an adjacent pole. I didn't find any actual damage to the wiring on the pole that was struck by lightning. After this incident, I did install a ground wire from the top of the pole to ground, much like the utilities do on each of their poles. I'm not a fan of lightning rods, but I do believe that a good path to ground and separate grounds for lightning and power are wise. A metal skinned building is a tough case since the power ground will be connected to the skin somewhere.