As teenagers, as friend and I were getting out of a creek, pulling on the farmers barbed wire fence, a strike hit about a half mile away, not sure how close to the fence it hit. With our feet in water and our hands on the fence, we got zapped but not nearly as bad as you may think. Probably took a path down every wet fence post before reaching us.
I think that I had cable run to the TV at that point, but I can't remember clearly. The console had always been run through RCA plugs.
Another interesting fact that I forgot to mention: I was in a treehouse at the time, which was actually at a higher point than any other part of the house. lol
There is a company that sells lightning protection that allegedly works like that. It doesn't work. Their devices do work as lightning rods. On the other hand, the limited research that has been done is that a somewhat rounded rod end is slightly more effective as a lightning rod than a sharp point.
Lightning would be happy to hit the well cap. As someone said, there are probably higher targets. Lightning rods work by being higher than the building they protect.
There is a very light chance of a problem in a shower. But I believe the advice from "experts" is to not take a shower. And to not use a wired phone.
Years back at an Army infiltration course (barbed wire overhead, GIs crawling underneath, 1/4 sticks of tnt in sandbagged berms exploding near them, live machine gun fire overhead), lightning struck the controllers bunker, injured a few, went down the control wiring and set off every charge in the course at the same time.
On Aug 10, 11:16=A0pm, Metspitzer wrote: ?
Ditto. I lost 2 with the same symptoms. I think they had a design flaw. I changed brands and never had it happen since.
Red
And by being pointed. Bub is right. I forgot and had it that part wrong. I'm still not sure of the details and it's too hot here to look it up, but somehow the pointed and high nature of the lighning rods with their points discharges, or something, the likely target and makes lightning much less likely to strike. Because if lightning did strike the lightning rod, the relatively small diameter wire that leads to the ground could never carry 1/100th of the current it would have to, would probably vaporize if metal can do that, but at least melt, and the house and its contents would have to carry much of the lightning to ground.
Somone told me a story about selling lightning rods and one of his customers broke off the "needles" because he thought it looked nicer that way, but they work either not at all or not much without the needles. .
Wow. That's why I never crawl under barbed wire with TNT nearby.
There is an alternate protection scheme that claims that their systems prevent strikes. It is not accepted by lightning researchers and the lightning protection industry. Lightning starts with a stepped leader that descends from the clouds in steps. The path of the stepped leader will not be affected by a lightning rod. The final step is to an upward leader from something connected to earth. The emitters in the alternate scheme do not prevent strikes - tests include NASA and airports. One source of details (fairly technical) is:
The only research I have heard of is that the most effective point on the end of a rod is about 5/8" diameter, and there is not much difference anyway. (One source is an engineer that designs lightning protection.)
(Lightning rods are now called air terminals.)
Complete nonsense. Lightning rod down conductors are plenty large enough to carry the full lightning strike. You need far less conductor for the about 0.01 millisecond duration of lightning than you would need for a continuous current. Lightning rod systems get hit all the time and remain intact and effective.
The proof by anecdote. The building was hit by lightning? Or someone thought the rods wouldn't work? (But I wouldn't advise changing an installed system.)
I'd be afraid of an air terminal. I'd be afraid the bus would drop me off at the terminal, I'd walk out the door and fall 500 feet.
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