Yeah just the static discharge it the air after a lightning strike can mess with electronics.
I see lightning I shit my pants lol.. I was on my way out west in a semi-truck a few years back and was hit by a direct strike... NOT fun.. I know the tires insulate you but it blew out 8 tires and fried the trucks computer... Good thing for insurance
But either way unplug anything plugged into the computer that can funnel the charge into it...
Power cord and lan wire also the gpu vga cable is what I unplug just to be safe.
Well i was indeed shutting down everything else and when the lightning happend kind of backed off my hands off the keyboard with chair a few steps back.
I did disconnect all other stuff and TV lines but i kept the net line going since it's on a surge protector as well as the official anti-lightning storm device that I got when they first installed broadband in here. The only reported lightning striking was more than 20 years old and struck the whole neighbourhood, my family had a very very expensive TV bought in Germany (very heavy big CRT) and questionably transported down here (border), the TV survived very long as they don't try to rush and thrown things away, it was repaired many times, though it was the TV they were talkin about storm hit into it and you could hear all kinds of sounds coming from the frying circuits that was going in side they said.
The secnod thing was, it wasn't a lightning storm was close but not hitting the ground in the vicinity, it was strucking up on the hills but it was very loud, however by the sound I knew it was not strucking close, when it strucks to the ground like so when it did last year by blowing up 2 old trees in the small lonely hill just about 1 KM away (prior the big spanning 1500m hills to the south, which are anohter 2 miles away to the south) That had a very very disticnt sound, it was higher pitch and didn't have the long lasting effect of thunder, it was powerful but over fast and just buy hearing it you freaking knew it it's super close.
The biggest thing i hate about these storms here is they keep circulating and coming back and i have to run aroudn the house, but the other thing is, when night falls the circulations are REALLY fast, it comes from southwest and goes to northeast or north, and they go zapping fast, like in 2 minutes 5 big thunders happen and by the last thunder it's already 20 km too far to the north to hear it, it's weird. Because it surprises, once there was no warning shots i heard and OUT OF NOWHERE it just struck big time close, but by the time i turned off everything it was gone.
The other thing is is the another lonely strucks, ah it was just some 10km away it was pretty big bass but it was away, but the clouds just have to be connected and somehow it came back and out of nowhere struck closely, it wasn't that disticnt sound, but it was like 3km after the main thunder was like 3-4 times more away, i heard they used to call some kind of storm like this "out of the blue".
The other strikes i know personally ... they aren't a lot , both of them are surprisingly deeper into the city, as im in the edge of the city closer to the big hills, the first one was very long ago where a storm hit a house directly into the main electrical network and blown out all the electrical sockets 2 meters (that's a lot) out of the walls, so the guy had his house full of wires sticking out of walls like crazy. The other one was at my then friend, times of elementary school, his house was struck and it went into the broadband cable, so .. no idea if the modem threw out but it most certainly did, got a replacement for free i think, but it did damage the PC, motherboard CPU RAM and PSU were all goners, miraclously HDD was totally fine.
That's when i got a first hand experience why should we not buy OEM PCs ... the basic mainstream company for electronics called "big bang" or "comtron" not sure which one of those (or both actally, it was bought in bigbang stores but the PC OEM dealer was comtron, because i saw all the papers they shown me, i think i remember somehow) The PC was fairly budget (compared to my other friends who had more than 1 and all for gaming) and it was a 450€-500€ OEM PC with external graphics for some games so it was possible to play RTSs ... so the warranty repair, get a load of this one, the final cost of the warranty was estimated 1000€ ... how the fuck if the PC didn't cost more than half of that, they didn't had to pay anything, but it was a kind of a trick to show up they had more expenses ... and the PC, it was a piece of crap compared to the original, slow and laggy.
I wasn't that deeply invloved into investigating back then i didn't knew as much as i do now, so now ... i've actually question the fact that mobo CPU RAM got burned out, you know why ... because the Windows installation was intact as it seems , they would have to reinstall ... so it leaves only the PSU to be damaged , no idea it was too long i can't remember if it was the same mobo or not but it CERTAINLY was a lot weaker PC than before, not enoguh ram it was laggy by just loggin in, and yes the computer was turned on when storm hit.
