I agree unplugging may be your best bet, but it may not be enough for all devices. We were hit by lightning ( it was a direct hit) a little over a year ago and some items that were not plugged in were fried. The electrician, phone repair man, and insurance person all told us some of the newer more sensitive devices are affected even if they are not plugged in. Even more strange, a fairly new TV, a new cable box, brand new Blue Ray player, PS2, and old sound system, were all plugged into the same surge protector. The PS2 and the old system were fine, the other 3 items were all destroyed. We had items in closets that were fried and had other items that were plugged in that were fine. Another thing to keep in mind, a direct lightning hit can cause a fire, as ours did, and items can get destroyed from the fire and water damage, so my best advice, make sure you get "replacement coverage" not "cash value" on your insurance policy.
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General discussion
Do surge protectors merely give us a false sense of security?
Do surge protectors merely give us a false sense of security?
Here's why I ask this question. I live in upstate South Carolina, a
region prone to severe thunderstorms in the spring and summer. So
naturally I purchased and faithfully use surge protectors for all of
my sensitive electronic equipment. Several weeks ago we had a doozy of
a thunderstorm with multiple nearby lightning strikes and power
surges. I sat confidently at my computer and continued to work,
basking in the false security of a UPS and multiple surge protectors.
Zap-crackle, zap-crackle, Zap! "Wow, that was close" I thought. I even
thought I heard the surge protector "kick in." What I heard was my
cable modem arcing to ground! Yep. Fried it. And the phone modem. But
the big loss was my multi-function printer/scanner/copier/fax system.
D-E-A-D dead.
But wait! Don't these surge protectors come with a "connected
equipment protection policy?" I was shocked to discover (pardon the
pun) that I had actually kept the warranty information for the surge
protector in question. Indeed yes, it has such as policy. So I
contacted Schneider Electric, the manufacturer of the APC brand. They
confirmed the product's warranty and took me through their product
return process. Their letter arrived today. "The APC product we tested
showed no indication of malfunction," they wrote. "Your equipment
damage is therefore unfortunately not covered under APC's Equipment
Protection Policy."
So what I have is a perfectly "good" $20 surge protector that failed
to protect a device worth hundreds of dollars. It seems to me this is
$20 wasted. What do your readers think?
Kind regards.
--Submitted by: Jeff H.
Discussion is locked
121 - 150 of 206 Posts
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When my devices were taken out by lightning strikes they weren't direct hit but they were close. Again, depending on proximity to the actual strike will depend on the potential for damage. My last experience was when a bolt hit the ground across the street from my home and it fried my cable modem, two of my TV boxes (but not the other two) and cooked my ethernet card and cable. However, everything else about the PC was fine. Imagine that, talk about luck.
Lightning is not uniform and the damage is a function of the strength and proximity of the hit as well as the amount of protection and ground faulting you possess. And in the case of this last strike for me, a bit of luck.
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A few years back I had my electronics all hooked up to "high quality" protectors; I work for the Federal government and these were the identical ones used on all Federal computers containing personal information. Behind my house here in Buffalo N.Y. (known for blizzards, not lightning storms) is a baseball park with a huge batting cage about 20 feet behind my house. When lightning struck it during a rare violent storm, the charge traveled through my wiring and took out (fried) 2 computers, two televisions, and 2 cordless landlines, as well as completely toasting the entire phone wiring throughout the house. The protectors did NOTHING! Since then, I do not use any surge devices at all.
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I live in Volusia County Florida and I've heard it said that we live in the lightning capitol of the "world" by some. I do believe we have some of the dirtiest power I have ever dealt with. I also experienced a crack of lightning so close that it made it's way into our home and distributed itself along the electrical circuit in our garage, completely melting the timer switch in our washing machine. That was a scary loud blast and I experienced a huge spark from the garage light switch when I went to check out the damage.
I consider myself very fortunate because nothing could have prevented further damage because the lightning hit the transformer right outside our home. It was pure luck that the washing machine took the brunt of the damage and that I was able to find a replacement timer for it.
That said, four computers, TV, surround system along with all the other electronics in the home are always subject to this phenomenon. I gave up unplugging everything because we get hit by thunderstorms nearly every afternoon during the summer months and it was just too inconvenient. Since the lightning strike, I installed a whole house surge protector on the main breaker panel but I have always had at least half a dozen UPS's around the house protecting my electronics. I've had a microwave oven die suspiciously but other than that, no electronic failures. I use cheap UPS's for things like the garage door opener but hospital-grade UPS's for everything important. Still, it's impossible to protect everything. Some things just draw too much power to put on a UPS. But I am a firm believer in them for one main reason.
More often than high voltage spikes, we experience momentary voltage sags or brown-outs that may last only a fraction of a second but I believe can be just as bad for all your electronics. They are mostly noticeable by a very brief dimming of the lights in the house and it might be because I live on the coast which is an island that gets power from limited sources. But these very frequent brown-outs can force some electronics to burn out because some equipment may attempt to draw increased amperage to compensate for the momentary loss of voltage. But everything on the UPS's maintains a constant even voltage and I have never experienced a loss of anything I have had connected to them. I suspect the hard drives in my desktop computers might be much happier without experiencing those voltage lags.
Luck, perhaps, but cheap insurance might be another way to look at it.
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I wonder if it's appreciated just how much oomph there is behind a lightning strike. Surge protectors may divert the odd mains spike but pretty much nothing will protect equipment against a direct hit. I used to a be a UK BT telephone engineer and, believe me, I have seen it all. Innards of phones blown to pieces. Junction boxes (with so-called protection built in) blown off walls. Cabling vaporised so there is nothing left but a load of flexible plastic insulation, the actual conductors having completely disappeared. Wooden telephone poles split completely down the middle from a direct hit which also travelled a long way down the underground section of plant, blowing cable joints to pieces in the process. Was even caught myself in dial-up days once by a rogue, one-off cloud that passed over. PC on and suddenly, out of the blue, one really vicious simultaneous thunder and lightning happening. Big crack from PC and bang went dial-up modem, despite using an anti-surge power board, so that one obviously came down the phone line, being an overhead feed. Ironically, mine appeared to be the only phone still working in the neighbourhood afterwards. Everyone else's had died. The only sure-fire solution is to unplug everything (including the phone line) when a storm is around, 'koz there ain't a lot gonna stop it!
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Yes, surge protectors do work in "normal" conditions. Electric current can be compared to a water flow in that when you switch an appliance on it's like opening a sluice gate: water produces a bow wave whereas electricity produces a spike. On a 250-volt mains this could give a 1,000-volt spike for an extremely brief period. But it's the repetitive spikes that act like many waves, eventually it weakens the components and eventually breaks them (like an incandecent light bulb filament) hence a surge protector removes that risk of damage.
We all understand what an electrical insulator is, perhaps we know what a semi-conductor is - it's where the flow needs a little help because there's some resistance in the way. The truth is, that given the necessary amount of pressure(voltage) anything will conduct electricity. Therefore, with lightning, the electric will flow and nothing will stop it. That's why your computer should always be switched off - and unplugged - with lightning about. A direct lightning strike will literally go through anything and jump gaps (switches) which is why high voltage power lines break too - so there's no chance of a domestic circuit being safe. Don't ignore the fact that there are massive momentary surges produced as a consequence of a lightning strike - millionths of a second they may be but fatal to sensitive components they still are.
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Jeff - I hate to say this but you get what you paid for. If you want to get proper protection against surges and spikes, you not only have to look at the Joules rating of the surge protector, but you have to look at the warranty as well. The whole concept of a surge protector in the event of a lighting strike is that the surge circuit will burn itself out preventing any type of surge hitting the equipment that is plugged into the protector.
I live in the Florida Keys and we have multiple lighting strikes year round. I have been using APC equipment for many years but I always look at the warranty as well as the specifications on the equipment before I purchase it. Yes, the warranty is very specific and if the equipment is hit without it affecting the surge protector, then you have a very low joules rated surge protector. You need to get a surge protector where the joules rating is at the minimum of 750 joules, preferably over 1,000 joules. That way, your equipment is very well covered during a storm. Also, you need to turn off all equipment once a storm is coming to your area. There is no sense in taking a chance on ruining your equipment. I have too much invested in my equipment to take that kind of chance.
For my Internet & phone system I have AT&T U-verse and they supply a highly rated UPS so I do not have to worry. If it gets hit, AT&T replaces it as it is their equipment and they replace it if there is an issue.
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Yeap! It seems thatthe $20.00 was not for a surge unit but more for a power strip or glorified extension cord. You really have to look closly at those units when they are inexpensive. you want to get one that has a high joule rating. Each 'MOV' (the actual voltage absorbing unit) that is in the unit usually has a rating of about 90 joules. Therefore a high rating in the thusands is recomended. One company that I've found that honors their warranty at least for the surge unit replacement is Belkin. I called about my bad units, they asked a few questions, put a hold on one of my credit cards (as insurance - I had to send back the bad one), and a few days later, I had a new unit. Luckily my connected equipment was not damaged! However, the surge unit was a total waste. It did what it was suppose to do... Die in the line of duty! I'm so glad I looked at the unit and saw the 'Lifetime' warranty. So, THANK YOU Belkin for honoring your warranty! You ROCK!!!
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For fear of showing my age, I will mention a study I conducted in the (19)70s. It showed conclusively that surge protection/filtration is worth more than your manufacturers warrantee. Properly protected equipment rarely fails. Most damage to electronic equipment is due to dirty power. Power is dirtier today than it was then. Filter the power to get something smooth and then try to redirect or suppress the surges.
Whole house is very good protection from lighting, second only to a lighting rod on your neighbor's house. But surges originate inside the house also, often on the same circuit as the device you want to protect.
Spend some money on this. Protect your house, then protect your gear. You can't always be home to unplug everything so do what you can to make sure you don't have to. A UPS/battery backup provides time for equipment to shut itslef off in an orderly manner but, having just been through a 5 day outage, I know it can't protect keep equipment running indefinitely.
Spend some money on good Furman or Panamax equipment and then replace it when it is no longer effective. Yes, there are ways of determining this. MOVs die quickly. Other things last longer but nothing lasts forever, not even J Edgar Hoover. If you don't know who that is, my point is made.
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dliberman is correct to point out that "dirty power" is an important factor. To illustrate this - I used to be a specials faults investigator and one problem that I dealt with illustrates this perfectly. A new electronic telephone exchange was commissioned for a large newspaper group and inexplicably, the system crashed intermittently during the early hours. The fault could not be reproduced and the crash data yealded no clues. In desperation I was called out to investigate. It turned out that the crash occurred whenever another large newspaper group, who was operating in the same area, switched on their printing presses at more or less the same time as the group with the problem. This resulted in a significant drop of the potential in the supply (voltage/pressure) which produced a ripple effect (spikes) and it was this that was big enough to cause the electronic system to power down. Very often the so-called "clean" supplies provided to customers are still rather "dirty" because the electric source is affected by other users so it rather depends on what is linked to the particular local transformer. A "clean" connexion is simply a result of taking a feed direct from a supply into the building, this is usually a supply fed directly from a sub-station transformer (a bigger source), however, you need to appreciate that electricity acts and behaves rather like water in the sense that it is affected by others (it's just that it acts considerably quicker and has different terms used to describe it). Hence, if you imagine a large lake, a volumous increase into it has a minimal effect on the output, whereas in a small swimming baths it would produce a significant and disastrous effect. In summary, to say that surge arresters have no positive advantage or that it is entirely down to what you pay for them, is to totally misunderstand the problem. Even a high-end specification will not cope with lightning for instance. Where the advantage of a high-end spec would definitely be worthwhile, is in an area likely to experience many thunderstorms where the ripples in the supply might be too big for a low-end spec. surge arrester. But never try to convince yourself that any spec. can be guaranteed to cope with the impact of the effect of a direct lightning strike - that is a nonsense. A university (I think it was in LA America), built a storage of thousands of capacitors in a hillside where lightning was fairly common. They then erected a pole to catch a lightning strike. A strike happened and the whole lot blew up. The salient lesson here is that lightning is, as yet, totally uncontrollable - the power in it is awsome.
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We've had some severe t-storms here in NYC just this past week and then the heat wave which caused Con Ed to lower voltage at key times; I saw the lights dim and the fans slow down but my computer and TV, connected to APC and Belkin respectively, remained unscaved! I shutter to think what might have happened to those expensive pieces of technology had they not been hooked up to a surge protector. I would rather err on the side of caution than risk a complete 'melt down' of my electronics! I think a surge protector, a good one, is a good idea and a worthwhile investment!!!
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Surge protectors are of no use at all against brownouts. So your stuff would have survived just as well without them. If you're talking about uninterputable power supplies, that's another thing.
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After a bad lightning storm blew out my sewing machine motor, I bought medium range surge protectors for nearly every socket in the house. I then paid about $100. for my computer surge protector--it was the best on the market several years ago. I have never regretted paying that much for one surge protector. Three different times it stopped a surge by turning off the electricity automatically before it got to my computer. I still have the insurance policy stating that it would pay $75,000 if it did not protect my computer--I never had to use it. Of course, a direct hit of lightning onto a computer would be impossible to protect as it would likely destroy the whole box. So, I say, yes, an expensive surge protector is worth it--most definitely..
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Disregard the other answers here, as they have not provided real world test verification.
Reality: Whole house surge protection does not protect against lightning damage, nor does copper grounded lightning rods (direct strike). It is also a myth that the nearest tall object will attract lightning. Whole house, local outlet surge protectors and UPS units protect against transient spikes, area lightning grounds and damage from the power grid. All the same, I tell people they have surge protectors already in the form of the most sensitive electronics like microwave oven, air conditioner, TV, stereo, electronic phones, etc. Those devices will "fry" first and absorb the spike.
One of my houses took a direct strike (lightning rods installed). The bolt managed to find a path through 70 ft. maple and oak trees covering the house (city), strike the wall on the 2nd floor, travel through the electric conduit to ground. The damage was limited to that direct path which burned a path through the wall. When I lived in an apartment building, the lightning struck across the street on a roof, then down the wet building, across the wet grass into my building, arced through the glass patio doors and back to ground. Damage tripped the building breakers and the power co. sub-station. In another house (rural), lightning struck the open ground about 300 feet from the house. The control panels for security system fried and all the GFCIs and breakers tripped. I protect my computers and every other electronic device with surge protectors and UPS to condition the power and prevent harmful (frequent) spikes, brown outs and power failures. Unplugging is the only way to reduce the threat although lightning arcs can still burn out TVs and computers with no connection.
Over 40 years of electronics, power surges from the grid have destroyed two stereo systems, two microwave ovens, one portable A/C, two TV sets, a dozen modems, a router and a PC. Whole house surge protectors and UPS devices can prevent this damage but not from lightning. The only protection from lightning that works is: backing-up data and paying for damage insurance.
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Once upon a time I too thought surge protectors to be a waste of money and they never seem to do the job...well my whole opinion changed after this last 4th of July holiday...my house was ZAPPED over the weekend and the only things that did NOT get fried were plugged into surge protectors!...when the power resumed guess what I did?...you guessed it, I replaced all the blown surge protectors with new ones...bring on the lightening...
Mike
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So the connected equipment warranty is basically send it to them and if they determine it failed you collect? Sounds like that warranty was worth a lot less than $20.
If you experience a direct strike between a cloud and your household wiring, all the surge protection in the world isn't going to help you. In that case I hope your homeowner's policy (if you own your home) is a lot better than that warranty. I know of a house that was razed by such an event. Fortunately, that's relatively unlikely. Usually, damage is considerably less than a direct strike would cause. How much less is a complete crap shot. One power line protector may or may not be enough.
The surge protector wasn't $20 wasted. However, you obviously needed more. It's much like the ongoing discussion here about data backups: putting all your faith in just one thing often doesn't cut it. Kind of like doing a "del *.*" or the GUI equivalent on a directory, without checking your work first, because you know you have a backup (which may happen to fail that day).
If you are experiencing threatening thunder storms it's a good idea, if possible, to go around and disconnect everything valuable or vulnerable (from AC, telephone, cable, etc.). That may not be practical but I wouldn't have been using my computer during such an event. At the very least, I would have powered it down.
So, yes, you definitely were lulled into a false sense of security.
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> If you experience a direct strike between a cloud and your household wiring, all the surge
> protection in the world isn't going to help you.
Which explains why your town is without telephone service for four days after every thunderstorm. Because the CO suffers about 100 surges per storm. So they replace their $multi-million computer after every storm. That is your logic?
Reality: 'whole house' protectors even provide numbers that say protection from a direct lightning strike. Routine is to have direct strikes without damage. So routine that surge damage (from lightning or other sources) is considered a human created failure.
Orange County FL was suffering repeated failures in their Emergency response system. So Orange County fixed the only reason for their damage.
"Whole house' protectors are provided by companies with better reputations including ABB, Siemens, Intermatic, General Electric, Square D, Ditek, Polyphaser, and Leviton. A Cutler-Hammer versions sells in Lowes and Home Depot for less than $50. These products are rated to earth direct lightning strikes. And remain functional. As any protector must do if providing protection. A properly sized and earthed protector means you never even knew a surge existed. And the protector remains functional for at least 10 years. The superior solution costs about $1 per protected appliance. Is necessary to even protect power strip protectors (that sometimes cause house fires).
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One advantage of fiber optic. It does not conduct electricity. My wife feels much safer on the telephone during thunder storms. My computer and TV are also connected to fiber optic. During thunder storms I shut off the electric to my desk top computer but do not disconnect the connection to the internet,
My brother-in-law says fiber optic is used on planes because it does not conduct if a plane is hit by lightning.
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I don't think that counts, having a fiber optic ISP such as Verizon; their connections are only fiberoptic to the codex; (to the building) then its coax run through the house, which is copper, so I believe you're still in danger.
In any event, if power goes out in the neighborhood, your wife won't be able to make a call on her landline 
I have FiOS service for all three (phone Internet and TV) and if the power goes out we have to use our cell phones. My mother-in-law on the other hand, just has a POTS line and can still dial out during a power failure.
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Your example of airplanes is a different matter. I don't think the fiber optics in planes are the same used in data trunks.. I don't think its the glass in fiberoptics that is saving the airplane from any lightning damage, but I'm not an aeronautical engineer so.....is your brother-in-law? 
Also, fiberoptics are complex, can't be bent, and are shielded from crosstalk, but other materials used to build the cables are electrically conductive, even though the actual glass used for the lightpath is not...
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My brother-in-law is an engineer whose specialty is designing electrical connectors for electronic devices world wide. So far he has had good job security.
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My Fios is fiberoptic all the way to within feet of my TV and Computer. The telephone lines in the house do contain copper wiring. Last week we lost power, our telephone was used to call the electric company. No cell phone needed. We have a battery backup which operates our phone in case of power failure. I don't know if a labtop would still operate since I only use a desk top computer.
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1) Often the telephone fiber like FIOS terminates at the junction box on the house and then transistions into the internal copper or fiber. Usually copper.
2) Since telephone systems, outside the house, have their own power supply, that is why you will almost always have an active landline connection. You only have that with your fiber because of the power backup.
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I believe you are incorrect on fiber 'all the way to within feet of your TV and Computer. As Rangoon points out, it is either terminated in a box outside your house or within the house - depending on how they determined the best way to hook you up. I know of no home system from any ISP that can connect fiber directly to the back of your TV/STB or your computer (I know of no motherboard or home/office router that supports fiber optic cables terminating with an endpoint that you can plug into). Those big fat round white/black cables are coax cables - and can still get pretty damn fast, based on the ever evolving DOCSIS standards, but they are not fiber; nor can they (at current standards as far as I know, get up to fiber's speeds). Fiber cables are thin and flat, coax is thick, fat, and a pain to manipulate.
About the phone still working while having a power outage? - Ohhhhhhh yeeeeeeeaaah... 
I forgot, I don't have that on a battery backup. Oops. Oh well, who needs to be disturbed by charities anyway, especially during a power failure.. HEE HEE 
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> One advantage of fiber optic.
Maybe. Fiber has a trailing wire. Necessary to trace a cable. If single point earthing is not implemented, then even the fiber can be an incoming or outgoing (destructive) path.
No way around the always required single point earth ground - even if using fiber.
What is the most common incoming path for a surge? Cable and telephone wires long ago had superior protection. But direct lightning strikes to wires most exposed (AC electric) means a strike far down the street is a direct strike to all household appliances. Which ones are damaged? Which ones already contain superior protection? Which ones make the better connection to earth?
One good connection to earth are multiple wires that connect to the optical network terminal/ An ONT must be earthed if properly installed. Incoming on AC mains. Outgoing to earth via what wire?. What is in that destructive path from AC mains because a 'whole house' protector was not earthed?
Be more concerned. Protection is always about a path from cloud to earth.
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Fiber itself won't zap anything, but any electronics involved will, when hit, die in a burst of smoke. That means the codex, modem, translator, router, anything that derives operating voltage from an AC connection is in danger.
Will a surge protector safe guard your set-up? Yes, if for no other reason that it's the first thing in line and if it dies first, it will be a sacrificial form of protection. If it keeps you from having to replace every thing but the SP, it did it's job. Spend another $20 and replace it. Good insurance in my book.
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> Will a surge protector safe guard your set-up? Yes, if for no other reason that it's the
> first thing in line and if it dies first, it will be a sacrificial form of protection
A violation of how electricity works. If a current is incoming on one wire, then the same current is outgoing on some other wire - simultaneously. Electricity does not work like a wave on the beach.
How does a surge do damage? First an electric current is everywhere in a path from a cloud to distant earthborne charges. Simultaneously. If current is in the lightning bolt, the same current is simultaneously in earth.
First: if a current is incoming to a protector, then a same current is outgoing, simultaneously, through the codex, modem, translator, router, etc. Long after that current is passing through everything, then something(s) fails.
Second, why does a protector fail? Read its numeric specifications. Near zero protection. Just enough above zero so that advertising can hype it as 100% protection. Undersized. protector components (ie MOVs) disconnected as fast as possible. While leaving electronics connected. No problem. Most surges are too tiny to harm electronics. And destroys a grossly undersized protector. That failure promotes 'sacrificial' myths and more sales.
Specification numbers are damning. How does that hundreds joule protector stop a surge that is hundreds of thousands of joules? It doesn't. Read numeric specs.
Third, what happens when a protector does not disconnect fast enough? House fire is one unfortunate option. An appliance left connected to smaller surge does not fail. A grossly undersized power strip does - sometimes creating a fire.
Let's be quite clear how a protector is wired. Protector parts are not located (in series) between a surge and electronics. A surge hits protector parts and electronics in parallel. Protector components disconnect. Electronics remain connected and usually unharmed.
Fourth, nothing stops or blocks a surge. Not a circuit breaker. Not a switch. Especially not a grossly undersized protector. Will a millimeters gap stop what three miles of sky could not? Of course not. So how does that protector (or anything else) block a surge? It doesn't.
How does a 2 centimeter MOV stop what three miles of sky could not? Many claim a protector will sacrifice itself to .... reality - better protection was inside electronics.
How does every facility suffer direct lightning strikes without damage even to a protector? An effective protector connects low impedance (ie 'less than 10 feet') to single point ground. Is a properly sized 'whole house' type protector - to not fail. Separation between a protector and electronics increases protection.
Nothing stops a surge. Either surge energy connects 'low impedance' to earth. Or that surge is inside hunting destructively for earth via appliances. Blows right through any adjacent protector.
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All good, partially true points. I won't hit each of them but these. Surges CAN be stopped! Basic electronics describes a device called the 'choke'. What it is is a largish coil with a ferrite core. All energy is absorbed by the coils of wire in the choke so that the induced current from the generated EMF in the device counters the surge wave front. End result is more of a slow voltage bump of much less intensity than a sharp spike. If the surge protector is in place, it will protect the devices directly connected to it by 'dumping' the surge to ground. Most quality SP will also include a circuit breaker that will open at the leading edge of the surge spike VERY quickly.
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> Surges CAN be stopped! Basic electronics describes a device called the 'choke'.
If a choke worked that way, then we are all connecting chokes to lightning rods. To power homes from lightning. Your assumption works as long as we ignore all numbers.
First, chokes are filters (for noise). Will a choke stop what three miles of sky could not? Of course not. But it must to do what you have posted.
Second, surges are a current source. That means voltage increases, as necessary, to blow through anything that might stop it (Including a choke). Nothing stops a destructive surge. Nothing.
Third, show me a choke that will store hundreds of thousands of joules? Good luck.
Fourth, it is electricity. If a current is incoming to a choke, then the same current is also outgoing. Where does that outgoing current go? A path to earth remains destructively via the appliance.
Five - if chokes do protection, then superior filtering inside appliances make all surges irrelevant. Protection already exists inside electronics. We are not discuss trivial and non-destructive surges. Destructive surges blow through superior and existing protection inside electronics.
Existing protection (provided by chokes, et al) make most surges irrelevant. We are discussing a destructive surge that occurs maybe once every seven years. A surge that overwhelms existing protection. A surge routinely made irrelevant if earthed BEFORE entering a building.
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remember Lighting also has Radio Frequency (RF) components - it's not just current - even if the lighting does not hit your line - - induced currents from the RF components can send a lot of voltage up and down any wires or even circuit boards - and being RF one wire can be a dead short and another wire could be a dead open - it depends on the RF at that instant in time so even if you have surge devices in line you still can get zapped - I have have been shocked 2 times by holding a cable when a lighting strike was near by but no a direct hit and the induced voltage was very painfull -
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