[plug] Lightning risk

[Ben Jensz]

Craig Ringer wrote:

>
>My understanding is that most computers are fried via spikes through the
>phone lines, not the power. 
>
>  
>
Yup, thats what happens in my experience. 

In the 6 years I've worked at the place I work at currently, the only 
dead equipment from lightning strikes we've had, haven't come through 
the power.  The major surge we had came through our 50 metre lightning 
rod (i.e. transmission tower) out the back (it got directly struck), and 
found its way into our computer network via the radio studio which was 
hooked into the main LAN at the time.  It zapped every single hub and 
killed every single network card in every computer (it didn't zap our 
Cisco ISDN router, or the Jetdirect cards in our HP network printers 
though).  All of the computers were fine apart from the dead network 
cards in them.

The only case where I've seen a computer getting zapped by it coming in 
via the power system, was one where the building itself suffered a 
direct strike from lightning, and even then only one computer was 
affected (but it was totally destroyed though - see here for pics: 
http://frozen.3fl.net/images/misc/burnt/).

BTW, we're talking Broome here.  So thunderstorms are the norm during 
the summer months (heck, we had a storm coming through when I got to 
work this morning).


/ Ben