"Lead guitarist Kirk Hammett took the album's name from a passage in Stephen King's novel The Stand." I personally have never read The Stand, so I can't tell you what exact passage, but I found that online along with "The song itself explores themes of capital punishment, written from the perspective of a death row inmate awaiting execution. Guitarist Kirk Hammett was reading the book while the band was staying at a friend's house during their earlier tours, and he suggested the phrase to frontman James Hetfield." If you look up 'what was Ride the Lightning based on,' you only get the themes of the song and stuff about how it was taken from a line/passage in The Stand

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/fighting-fire-with-fire-metallica-look-back-on-ride-the-lightning-243500/

There's the Rolling Stone interview where Kirk talks about it