You can think of zap as one sudden burst of energy that hits, does its whole job, and is finished — a spark jumping across a gap, over before you can react. Every use keeps that shape. The action takes no time worth counting, it happens once rather than gradually, and afterwards the thing it touched is different: broken, cooked, switched, sent, gone. When the burst destroys, zap is an attack. When the burst only does a job, zap is speed.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary records zap as 1920s American English of imitative origin: the word copies the sound of the spark. The sound came first, and the suddenness inside the sound is what every later meaning kept.
Wiktionary 記 zap 是 1920 年代的美式英語，屬於擬聲詞：這個字本身就是那聲「啪」。先有聲音，後來才有意思。聲音裡那股「就在這一瞬間」的感覺，被後面每一個用法留了下來。
Wiktionary, "zap"
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