Hi wheelz999,
I just had an interesting conversation with Tom Cumberland, Axiom's chief electronics engineer, who also sits on a number of Consumer Electronics Association panels that establish various electronic and wiring standards. Previous to joining Axiom, Tom lived in Florida, the lightning strike capitol of the world. During that time, before he realized what Florida was like, he lost several cable boxes, satellite dish receivers and computers to surges from lightning strikes.
Here's the gist of what he told me. If lightning strikes a transformer, phone lines or power wires outside your house, everything is toast--no surge protector will work.
However, he pointed out that if lightning strikes a mile away--goes from the ground to a cloud--it may generate a surge of a couple hundred joules on the power grid, which your protector would work against. Lightning strikes emit powerful EMF's (electro-magnetic field) like a nuclear blast, and that can travel along the power grid, cable lines or phone lines. It can even penetrate underground (buried) power and cable lines. But it's subject to the Inverse Square Ratio law, so that if the strike is a mile or a few Kilometers away, the surge weakens rapidly and is likely only going to be a few hundred joules so your device would work.
A UPS (uninterruptible power supply) like the battery backup on your laptop, will prevent computer problems from brief power interruptions which might be triggered by lightning strikes. Here at Axiom, which is in a Northern Ontario region that gets lots of storms, we have UPS on all the computers to protect against the power blackouts that occur fairly regulary during the fall and winter.
Regards,
Alan
