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Dangers Of Electrical Storms

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We had some bad storms up here this past week, took out my parents power for over a day, and I guess a lightning strike came in over the phone line, their poor 56k modem got it, their computer would not post, I pulled out the modem and its back working fine. The controller on the modem is missing a chunk out of it:
 

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My mom lives in Omaha Nebraska. So did I up until this year. My stepdad has a fairly nice sony Vaio and the year it was brand new (02 methinks, I could be off) we got struck by lightning. nothingg new in the big O and my stepdads computer was fine. I think ill leave my comp plugged in up here in good ol braindead(brainerd) minnesota. sorry about the poor capitalisation and spelling. im tired. i have a sinus cold.
 
heh, this thread is scaring me ****less. T_T I dropped $1200 on my rig last year and I'd DIE if I lost it to mother nature wanting a piece of me.

Good thing I spend Fall/Winter/Spring in Connecticut. :D There was maybe...two actual thunderstorms in that whole period?

Also, what about apartment style buildings? Would I be in any more/less danger being on the 4th floor if lightning struck the lines and decided to maul the building?
 
Kibokun said:
heh, this thread is scaring me ****less. T_T I dropped $1200 on my rig last year and I'd DIE if I lost it to mother nature wanting a piece of me.

Good thing I spend Fall/Winter/Spring in Connecticut. :D There was maybe...two actual thunderstorms in that whole period?

Also, what about apartment style buildings? Would I be in any more/less danger being on the 4th floor if lightning struck the lines and decided to maul the building?
Click to expand...

lol, if lightning strikes your house your computer shouldn't be your greatest worry. Sure it's worth a lot of money but a lot worse things can happen. My friend's parents had a TV antenna on the roof that was struck. The lightning surged down the cable and into the house, frying every device attached to the antenna cable and using them as bridges to the electrical system. He said that sparks were shooting out of the outlets and they were all fried and black. A lot of the wiring had to be re-done/replaced.
 
Something similiar happened to my parent's as well. A lightening hit probably the satellite dish because the satellite receiver was fried, the TV connected to it was fried, the telephone and answering machines were both fried since they were on the same telephone circuit as the receiver. And so was my old 56k Zoom branded external modem.

3 fried surge suppressors as well. Luckily my PC survived since the modem had a good internal lightening protection. The insurance covered the cost of the new satellite system, new TV, and new telephone stuff. I ended up getting DSL as it was just became available in my area.
 
we had one not to long ago

i have a cheap Anti-Serge Device & a Cheap PSU

i didn't get affected

but the next week i had to do 7 PSU, 1 M/B & 3 dial up modems replaced due to this


i will get a good anti-serge from belkin(they cover damaged componets)

just the roll of the dice if you get hit or the guy next to you does
 
That's when I started learning how to build PCs & the workings of hardware....when a lightning strike came through the phone line & welded the tel-line to my modem, while taking out the mobo & blew the cache. Opened it up & started trying stuff ... smelling stuff (oh, the smell of fried hardware in the morning) & ended up figuring it out, as you could see & smell the problem areas.

That was back in the dark & seedy age of Win 3.1 and Internet at $$$ per minute.

ewwwwwwww
 
Most surge devices are not rated for lightning strikes. Unless they are specifically made for lightning protection. Transient Voltage Surge Suppression is the only way to protect the electrical service wiring in your house. As far as data cable protection, devices used in the lightning protection field, are all self sacrificing units, and would need to be replaced once it is utilized. These are all units used in stopping in coming surges from exterior sources. This is how most peoples appliances are damaged, in electrical storms. People get a false sense of security when they plug their beloved electronics into a store bought surge suppressor, and are dumbfounded when their 3000 joule surge strip doesn't stop a 2 billion joule lightning strike:) OK that's a little overboard... that would be a direct lightning strike. A lot of surges range in the 4000 to 15000 joule range, depending on how close you are to the direct strike.
 
We actually had an overload in one of the gray garbage can sized devices on top of the telephone poles. [Can't get my tongue around the word.] And it sent Euro volts through the lines to every house on our block. Thankfully the power supply was turned off, or maybe we just got lucky. Every single fuse blew though. Thanks to the circuit breaker. :D
 
ChanceCoats123 said:
We actually had an overload in one of the gray garbage can sized devices on top of the telephone poles. [Can't get my tongue around the word.] And it sent Euro volts through the lines to every house on our block. Thankfully the power supply was turned off, or maybe we just got lucky. Every single fuse blew though. Thanks to the circuit breaker. :D
Click to expand...

Transformer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer
 
At my office, I have every computer on an APC UPS. Additionally on the servers, I have surge protection on the network cables connecting to the server.

One person in the office had brought in their home computer and did not connect it to the UPS let alone a surge protector. It was plugged directly into the wall.

There was an electrical storm and a surge came through the wall and into his computer. The surge traveled through the network cable and blew out my router, two switches, every network adaptor connected to the network, and other random computer components like USB ports and the like.

My server and other close-by networking hardware were spared because I had surge protection on the network cables. Everything else was trashed. That was a bad day for me all because one person's actions on the network.

Make sure you have adequate protection on every entry point. Quality UPS, Network Surge Protection, Phone Line Surge Protection, etc etc
Leave nothing unprotected.
 
was thinking would you be safe if you whent and turnd off the switchs in the power box and left things pluged in apart from phone lines
 
Yes. Laptop can still be fried even if it wasn't connected to anything and running batteries only but it'd take a very close strike to cause large EM blast that fries electronics. You're more likely to get lightening damage by wires (electric, phone, and cable) than by EM discharge.

Unplugging is still the best way to protect computers and electronics in a storm. And Laptop should be OK on batteries.
 
I lost a flat panel monitor, a television, and wireless keyboard a modem, and the receiver/transmitter on dish to lightning striking my satellite dish. it popped breaker, and surge, but still fried stuff. BE WARNED! :O lol
 
For those saying that a UPS is all you need.

A long time ago, I worked for a cabling company. Pulled and terminated low voltage cable primarily but did deal with some high voltage. One building we were working on was at the intersection of two power grids, a test was needed to be performed to make sure that changeover in case of issue went smoothly.

It didnt.

Mind you, the entire building was being redone, top to bottom and everything in between. It used to be a Jet engine testing facility and was being converted to a server farm...

Ever seen Industrial sized UPS? Picture your house, your entire house, full of deep cycle marine batteries. YOUR ENTIRE HOUSE.

Well the switch was thrown to change over from Grid A to B and all of a sudden alarms start going off. everywhere.

When they changed over, a small surge happened, roughly 30k VOLTS came in all at once. If you have never seen a ROOM of UPSes explode, be glad. I saw it after Hazmat had foamed the room. twice.

Now 30k volts is not anywhere CLOSE to a dead on strike and it managed to turn a room of batteries into flying lead and acid.

Think that UPS is gonna be fine after a strike?
 
JDXNC said:
We had some bad storms up here this past week, took out my parents power for over a day, and I guess a lightning strike came in over the phone line, their poor 56k modem got it, their computer would not post, I pulled out the modem and its back working fine. The controller on the modem is missing a chunk out of it:
Click to expand...

That's crazy! I never thought about unplugging but after that im going to start doing that. We get a lot of storms here in Oregon.
 
My grandma had a lighting strike a couple of weeks ago.

Blew up alot of stuff. They were shopping about 1hour away. Came home.

Tv, answering machine ac unit, computer, modem, all kinds of stuff ruined.


But i convinced them to get a new computer and helped them buy all of there stuff back.


The strike was about 30 yards away from there house and it hit a tree.

Its amazing how the electricity can travel though the ground that far and blow stuff up.
 
I feel so lucky right now, many storms had visited my home, the house we're in has like 4-5 lighting strikes, the 1st one we had to change the whole electric installation of the house (bye bye 1200$)...
The other ones I was just sitting in my room, watching TV (this was the last one like yesterday or something) and just started F@H (GO TEAM 32!!!).
I heard a big *BANG* sound, my TV continued working, but my PC shut down.
Everytime I tried turning it on it woudl just go *beep beep beep beep* had to clear the CSMOS and I was runnin n gunnin.
So yeah, I have a 29$ (or maybe even less) chinese PSU with no surge protection and stuff like that, but my PC still works.
 
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