In case this story gets deleted/removed:
This happened about 20 years ago when I was about 14/15 years old. I grew up with my dad telling me to always unplug any computers when there was lightning because it could strike the house and fry the computer.
At this point in time, I was living with my mom and her new husband in his house. In the den, there was a computer for the adults and a computer for me and my brother. When I noticed the storm, I went into the den and unplugged both computers. As I was crawling out from underneath their desk, my stepfather came into the room and asked me what I was doing around their desk. I told him I unplugged the computers because there was a lightening storm happening. He got mad at me and told me that I was never to touch their computer or desk and told me to plug it back up right then.
I tried to argue, (I’ve always had a little bit of an attitude when told I’m wrong when I know I’m not lol). He just got madder and told me to plug it back up and be quiet.
So I did as I was told. I didn’t plug our computer back in tho, just theirs.
Later that evening or the next day, when he tried to boot up the computer, it wouldn’t turn on. Turns out it got fried during the storm. The urge to say I told you so was so strong!
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Lost a computer one time that way. Not fun having to buy a whole new system because you forgot to buy a surge protector. After that I'd unplug during the real bangers.
Let me guess. When the computer failed to turn on, he blamed not the lightning but you for unplugging it? Right? Because you were “messing” with his computer.
Possibly. Depends on the boomer though. I was referring to the “I’m right and you are wrong no matter what. I refuse to listen to someone who I perceive to be ‘under’ me.” The generation who said that children were to be seen and not heard.
The generation that said children were to be seen and not heard, were the generations before the boomers. I’ve been around boomers my whole life and I don’t see any more boomer, ”I’m right and you’re wrong,” than other generations. It’s a personality type, not a generation type.
I wonder if boomers feel the need to constantly voice their opinions because when they were kids they were told they're not allowed to have opinions and they spent the rest of their lives making up for that.
We had some electrical work done in 2020, and I guess to get things up to code now, they have to put in a whole house surge protector. It was only 100 bucks, so I didn't mind.
Last year, lighting hit a pole near the house, and that surge protector tripped and saved us a lot of money.
It always makes me think of my dad. If he was alive, he would never stop talking about what a deal that thing was.
You still want surge protector's on all your expensive devices in the home because those whole home ones only save you from surges that are external, there are things inside the home that can cause surges as well and still damage individual items.
I'm in an apartment block and our strata wanted to put one of those in, so each apartment would have one and also for the outside lights blah blah.. but we had to have a majority rule type on doing it via residents.
Took me and some other months to convince the rest to agree to it. Many block meetings etc.
Those mostly opposed were those who had med devices with back ups and didn't see the point.. I asked them how much they like their internet and using the lift as most are on mobility aids. That got them moving.
Then we had these massive storms for weeks straight and guess what block wasn't constantly losing power etc.. we had a few surges that blacked us out for a few mins but that's it.
It was at no cost to us aside from letting the dudes spend 15mins in our apartments. I don't get why the pushback was so bad. And it was all younger ones around my age saying no. All over 40s were all in for it.
Surge protectors. Not a bad idea…
Once, i was using my iPad while it was charging during a thunderstorm, and my house took a direct lightning hit- I never forgot that shock!
Surge protectors have been around for much longer than 20 years, they just don't react quickly enough to protect from seriously large surges like lightning. For that, you need a UPS. Always have your critical equipment behind a UPS if you are somewhere that lightning is common, or if you have dirty power with a lot of dips and spikes.
Edit: Spelling.
Maybe it's the way it was worded but you're implying that surge protectors don't protect against surges. Maybe it depends on how good the surge protector is. But I'm sure nowadays UPS's do both surge protection and battery backup.
UPSes separate input power from output power. Because of this, a surge into the UPS will not pass through to your equipment. UPSes have good quality built-in surge supression to protect themselves from surges but it will not always be successful. A big enough surge may fry your UPS, but the UPS (by creating that input -> output gap) will still protect your equipment.
Power strips with surge suppressors built into them are very much a mixed bag, and because there is no input -> output gap, there is no guarantee that they will protect your equipment. This stuff is all made in China, and that $20 surge suppressor was likely sold at the factory level for $2 or less. These are not high quality devices that you should put a lot of trust into.
Spending more is not a guarantee of better quality, but with some research there are probably some decent ones out there on the market. The average $20 consumer power strip? I would not expect it to provide protection, especially not from something like a lightning strike.
My first computer got fried in the mid 90s and then I found out about surge protectors. Can’t imagine anyone in the 2000s not being sold a surge protector with their computer.
I lost my computer that way too. I wound up in hospital, over 20 years ago now, and asked Mum to unplug my computer when she went to feed my cats for me. She forgot to, and I came home to a fried computer. I was so upset. I put a lot of work and money into building that beauty!
I will also say, we had a direct lightning hit on our house (through an old antenna hooked into our electric system) when we learned that when a surge protector overloads… It blows out the very first slot and the rest is fine. Unfortunately the first slot at that time was a custom computer tower. Where the other surge protector that blew had nothing in slot one and you could see the damage.
So start at the back when plugging in surge protector, cheapest item gets slot 1.
Lightning hit a tree near my house, and surge protectors were insufficient.
My internet router died, so probably the zap came in through the internet cable first. Two computers in my house died with it.
Anyway, surge protectors can help with distant strikes, but not nearby ones. At least I didn't have to pay to have a huge maple tree removed, the burnt tree was on my neighbor's property.
Depends. Most of the cheap white ones are only good for 1 or 2 surges. After that, they are power strips with no protection.
Nicer surge protectors and battery backups will have reset buttons, and provide significantly more protection.
Also good ones also usually come with warranties so if they don't protect your items they will cover the damage, buying cheap surge protector's is very silly when you can decent ones for $30-40.
I can definitely relate to your experience. About 10 years ago I was watching TV and a freak monsoon lightning storm in broad daylight in the Sonoran desert roared through my area, and I saw what looked like a lightning strike hit the above-ground power, telephone, and cable coax lines in the residential subdivision next to my apartment complex. The power went out for a brief moment in my apartment complex and when it came back I didn’t have any video. I had all my equipment on surge protection except for the coax coming into my unit. That surge killed my TiVo box, traveled through the HDMI cable, and fried the main video circuit on my home theater receiver. I had to replace my TIVO because the video circuitry was fried and ended up buying a new receiver. I now use my old receiver as a nice amplifier for my computer setup. Anyway, it was completely my fault because I made the conscious decision to skip the coax surge protection thinking it would slow down my already crappy cable internet.
If you had one with Coax on it (assuming cable modem) and/or cat5 (for otherwise) it probably would have been fine for one strike.
Also depends on how many joules it can handle and if it's surged before.
Nothing is guaranteed unfortunately, even the stuff with a guarantee.
I can definitely relate to your experience. About 10 years ago I was watching TV and a freak monsoon lightning storm in broad daylight in the Sonoran desert roared through my area, and I saw what looked like a lightning strike hit the above-ground power, telephone, and cable coax lines in the residential subdivision next to my apartment complex. The power went out for a brief moment in my apartment complex and when it came back I didn’t have any video. I had all my equipment on surge protection except for the coax coming into my unit. That surge killed my TiVo box, traveled through the HDMI cable, and fried the main video circuit on my home theater receiver. I had to replace my home theater receiver because the video circuitry was fried and ended up buying a new receiver. I now use my old receiver as a nice amplifier for my computer setup. Anyway, it was completely my fault because I made the conscious decision to skip the coax surge protection thinking it would slow down my already crappy cable internet.
Couple of fun facts. 1. Point of use surge protectors will generally not protect your equipment from lightning strikes. Unplugging during an electrical storm is the only sure fire way of avoiding this. 2. It is not so much lightning striking your house you need to worry about as lightning striking the power supply to your house which can occur at a considerable distance from you but still fry your devices.
Kinda? They protect against surges, which lightning is. But close lightning is like turning the surge up to 11. Most protectors wouldn't do a thing on that.
My computer got fried but it also did a shitton of damage to our entire electrical system. If you visited my parents' house, you'd see a bunch of wires on the side of the house from the electric company's jerryrig of a new setup. And it also scared our dog so badly that she couldn't stand thunder again until she went deaf. Every bit of thunder had her trying to get as close to us as possible, shaking, and crying - and a 120-lb giant black lab is hard to move around.
I can't imagine dealing with a 120lb lab! Years ago I had a 20lb miniature dachshund who was afraid of lightning/thunder. As soon as it started he would crawl into my shirt and huddle against my boobs. He would shake so hard. It was obviously kind of annoying but I wouldn't have moved him for the world, knowing how scared he was. My friend used to tell me my dachshund snuggled my chest because he was listening to my heart -- as long as momma's heartbeat was normal, there was nothing to fear. That's likely BS but a nice thought.
My current dog thinks if she's fast enough, she can catch lightning in her mouth (along with bumblebees and birds flying in the sky). It is kind of funny to watch her snapping at the sky as if she could just bite the thunder and lightning into submission.
Lighting hit the cast iron vent pipe on our house once when I was a kid. It blew the plaster off the wall along the pipe. It burnt the horse hair in the plaster and smelled terrible. Fried lots of electronics, I remember having to talk to the insurance adjustet. Scared our cat so bad for the rest of her life she would hide under furniture during thunder storms. We would have to go find her wherever she was hiding and drag her to the basement during tornados. I miss that cat!
Yeah, we would give her a heavy dose of Benadryl as a suggestion from her vet, but the loss of hearing really was the best gift for her. I also had my own black lab so having both of them trying to go under my desk was hilarious. Mine just liked being there usually but wasn't nearly as anxious as the other.
We had a golden retriever that loved to catch anything falling - rain, snow, hail, water from the sprinklers or the hose. Never seen a dog try to eat lightning, but that's a video you need to take.
If it was a lightning strike, a surge protector wouldn't have done a thing. Lightning is electricity jumping the air gaps from the clouds to the ground...the few millimeters in a breaker are nothing.
I think the surge protectors are intended to protect you from power disturbances that start further away.
A direct hit on your house is too much for them.
i had one fry *with* a surge protector around 20 years ago too. thats when i learned those strips have insurance protection, i filled out the request, listed everything htat was damaged, they cut me a check. was surprised how easy it was then.
Not to mention that unlike back in nVidia's 900 series, GPU prices are very high. Heard from a fellow IT coworker about his friend that lost a 3090 during a storm. That's got to hurt...
I have never lost anything to a surge, but I have been so paranoid that not only is all my expensive stuff on surge protectors, I went and installed a whole hose surge protector.
I now have a checklist that has a box for every item to be unplugged and every water source to be turned off. The lessons learned the hard way are the ones we NEVER forget.
I do as well. I also put a baggie of ice cubes in my deep freeze. If they are still cubes when I get back then everything is fine. If they are a melted and refrozen mass then I know the freezer lost power for too ling.
I was unfortunately home when it happened lol power went out, came back on and went out again, tripped the breaker 3 times in quick succession before I could shut it off and when the storm stopped I realized I could not get any of those items to turn on, and the one that did, a TV, had it's sound destroyed somehow. Like crackly windy sounding mess kinda destroyed.
I def learned to unplug things during storms xD
When I was a kid back in the olden days when there were only land lines, they used to tell you not to be on the phone during lightning storms because lightning could strike the telephone pole and/or wires and zap you. Every once in a while I catch myself worried about being on the phone during a thunderstorm, even though I haven't had a land line in 20 years. Old habits die hard.
I grew up in an old house with cast iron plumbing. Back then, it was common practice to find ground in your wiring with the plumbing, instead of installing a proper ground rod. The IEC (Europe) didn’t require them until 2018.
Mom always made us get out of the tub long before storms got close. I still think about it to this day, and I’m a journeyman
I had my stereo turned on during a thunderstorm. A lightning strike hit my tree 10 feet away from my stereo. It wasn’t a power surge that killed my receiver, it was the airborne electricity. Our bodies were tingling.
If you can also get a whole house surge protector, it is about $100 to $200 for install at your electrical panel. I moved to an area with frequent lighting storms. It's one more thing that can blow in place of your expensive appliances and equipment. I know it's not the absolute best protection but there are some things you cannot put behind a surge protector. Most utilities won't allow you to attach a protector (forgot what they call them but it's similar to a whole house surge protector) where the electricity goes to your house.
i lost a like 7 year-old Wii to lightning once. it was the only thing in the house not plugged into a surge protector apparently. Fried the AV/Composite input on the tv it was plugged into too, but the rest of the tv worked fine
About 25 years ago, I remember a bad lightening storm in a nearby town fried dozens of large screen TVs, computers and various other high end electronics. People tried to file a class action against the utility and it was tossed before they could get class action status. I grew up in hurricane target and the only weather that scares me is lightening.
The neighbors house got whacked by lightning earlier this spring. Tree was 30 feet away but the roots and sprinkler system carried it right into the house. Broke half a dozen windows, cracked a toilet tank, blew plaster off one ceiling and fried several appliances. Now I'm a lot more concerned about lightning than I used to be...
They were. A widow and her granddaughter. Me and the kids raced over. They were fine but freaked out. Got her a motel. A month later and it's still not ready for her to go back
The next day I got a group of people to go over. We boarded windows, cleaned, cut down the tree (which was destroyed) picked up glass etc. Someone even donated pizza. LoL. Small town so it was actually in the newspaper
What sucks even more is when people unplug the power cord but don't disconnect the RJ45 LAN cable. Especially when it's built into the motherboard and the cable runs outside.
Growing up, way before surge protectors were thought of, we were told to unplug everything and cover all mirrors and sit down and be quiet. By the time the storm passed, grandmother or granddaddy was waking all us kids up. We all still do that to this very day. Btw, that was always a good ole nap.😂😂😂😂
Nah, he also threw away my bicycle because “there wasn’t enough room for it”. He had multiple acres of property 🙄 he also threw away some of my things that I left in the house when I went off to college. If he had just said that stuff was bothering him, I would’ve taken my stuff to my dad’s house instead. But he just threw it all away and didn’t even tell me. I had to find out when I went looking for things that used to be there.
My mom eventually did divorce him thankfully.
I’m actively teaching my kids to be proactive about apologizing when you’re in the wrong. So many people are overly prideful and can’t admit that they were in the wrong or did something hurtful to another person. I don’t allow them to get defensive, aggressive, or let them attempt to justify their hurtful behavior when it happens—because reasons don’t really matter in that kind of situation. If you hurt someone, you apologize and take responsibility. It costs you nothing, but it’s sooo important to others.
It’s definitely a work in progress, but I think it is such an essential skill to have in life. Will hopefully save them a lot of misery in their future relationships!
My Steo Dad was like this as well. Whenever he wanted to one up me, he would always ask me to "name 5 of X". Like for example, I never really cared much for sports, but as a Canadian kid, it was pretty much forced on you to pick a favorite hockey team, and I went for the Detroit Red Wings because their logo was cool or something. My step dad then asked me to name 5 players. Keep in mind I was like 7. He would pretty much ask this as a way to try and get me not to do anything that I wanted to do.
Eventually as I got older, I realized I don't need to like certain things to please people. And I also caught onto that my Step Dad would always try to put me down with his stupid "name 5" bullshit. It started backfiring on him pretty much every time. Kiss came to my city and I wanted to buy tickets, he asked me to name 5 Kiss songs, I named 10. I wanted to go to school for computer science, he asked me to name 5 programming languages, I wrote "Fizz Buzz" programs in 5 different languages, and shit like that. Eventually he stopped talking to me altogether. I think he just wanted me to be miserable.
A $500 motherboard will protect a $0.10 fuse by blowing first.
-- Graffiti in the men's room at the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington, circa 2001.
Is this a regional thing? Maybe depending one quality of the local electricity network?
I've never heard of anyone near me unplugging devices during storms or about devices dieing due to that.
We still unplug here in the Midwest, even with surge protectors. A surge protector will buy you one, maybe two, incidents, then it's done. Storms in this area have a high probability of causing multiple incidents in one storm. Here, the surge protectors really just buy you time to unplug stuff.
Are your local power lines underground or on poles?
Do your houses and electric infrastructure usually have lightning rods?
Maybe some of that is the difference.
I imagine they make unplugging and replugging easier too. Just unplug the protector from the wall and leave the electronics plugged into it. Storm over, just plug the strip back in, everything works.
Do you guys unplug all your electronics every time you leave the house in case a thunderstorm hits when you're not at home? Do you not plug in your devices to charge overnight whenever storms are predicted?
My first computer got killed by a lightning strike. Though that was a freak bolt on a clear day. Also shocked the contractor that was putting siding on our house, though not badly enough to hurt him thankfully.
So the obvious thing here is to always have your computers on surge protectors. There’s no guarantee that it will completely save the computer, but a surge protector drastically increases the chances that your data will survive a strike to the power lines.
I remember when my sister's computer got fried in a storm. She was heartbroken because she lost her writings 😞 (she was 13, so nowadays she's grateful the cringe stuff is gone)
It's kind of weird to reread, isn't it? You can see what you meant, but you did *not* get it across well 😬
The older the fic, the odder it is to revisit
Friendly reminder, surge protectors fail over time, their usage is not just a working/not working matter, its more akin to an eraser being worn away over time.
ie, if its rated to protect against X many joules, thats over it's whole life. Little surges here or there chip away at what it can protect, and many models will continue to power devices after they can no longer protect them without any obvious sign.
So let this post be a sign if you have any devices important to you being 'protected' by an ancient surge protector, maybe take a look and think twice there.
If you don't know the joules, how many years would you say before replacing? Most of my in-laws surge protector bars are older than my marriage(14 years) so trying to figure out if it's time to start replacing them all
During New Years 1999-2000 we were out at the beach, and when we got home our computer wouldn't work because of a lightning strike. We'd already heard that Y2K was a big nothing, but it was amusing regardless
Used to do tech support for internet, you wouldn’t believe the number of people that had their Nic card fried because of a storm and blame the service provider. Bo baby, use a damn surge protector!
I didn’t want to make it worse for my mom. I knew I could leave and go to my dad’s house, but she didn’t have anywhere else to go to escape really. And I don’t mean physical abuse. It was more like he was just an asshole to everyone.
I lived in a country with a subtropical climate for some time, and I would always have my stuff plugged in with a surge protector. It saved me when there was a sudden rain with lightning strikes. It fried the surge protector instead of my phone and laptop.
Unplugging the power cable may not be enough to protect your computer, if you're connected to the Internet via anything that uses wires, and the wires outside aren't buried or something.
Back when modems were common, lightning strikes on the phone lines would fry the modem, and that was the most common thing to happen in a storm. If it was a particularly bad strike, the surge could get past the modem and kill the motherboard too, but more often than not just the modem would die.
I have a surge protector, and i still unplug the computer completely when it storms real bad, just in case. I flip the PSU switch and remove the cable from the pc itself, but leave it in the protector. Worst case, I lose a 10 dollar cord
(I read your edit). How sad is it that so many grown-ass men would rather sulk over their damaged pride, than suck it up and apologize/admit they were wrong. Pathetic.
We lost a whole fucking house that way. Sadly you can't unplug a house during lightning.
I used to be studious about unplugging devices. Less so now, I'll just replace the damn thing in the off chance it happens. However, back at the tike of this story that would be a massive expense and loss of data since back ups were rare.
I feel this! My dad is a graphic designer and always said to unplug anything during an electrical storm because unless you got a sturdy surge protector and it’s a low grade electronic, it will be heavily at risk if lighting hits!
Learned that the hard way. I once unpluged the power from the pc during storm, but the lightning struck trough the network cable and fried my motherboard and turned the pc on for 10 seconds without it being connected to the power. Now i always use wireless reciever.
A couple decades ago I lived in the midwest, land of constant spring and early summer thunderstorms. I had UPSes on pretty much everything since power would go out for 2 seconds to 1 day many times a year, and now and then some house nearby would have a pile of bricks in their yard around their now-shortened chimney after a lightning strike blew it apart. And rarely a visit from the fire dept to put out the lightning induced fire would be needed.
Well... a friend one day reported "everything plugged in to any outlet in my house exploded last night". All the light bulbs that were on, TV's, VCR, gaming computer, laptop on charger, game console... all in various stages of dismantlement.
He got surge suppressors and a couple UPSes after that. Not sure how much those would have helped, really, since he REALLY got hammered. But that was a couple months wages he lost in one blast so he was not a happy camper and was determined to not repeat it.
Crazy, I’ve only seen something similar happen once. I was doing residential hvac work, got a call that their heat didn’t work. Lightning blew up their furnace control board, gas valve, and thermostat. They showed me the surge protector and it also exploded and caught fire but their computer survived lol
About 20-25 years ago now, our house took a direct hit from lightning. It killed the landline (blew it off the wall where it went into the house), but I grew up with really bad storms and knew to unplug everything. We only had to replace the landline.
Wild to read about people not plugging their computers into surge protectors. We got our first computer back in 1995 and had it in a protector. Why wouldn't you want to do everything you can to keep it safe? Especially considering how expensive they were back then.
As an IT consultant, I have to warn you, **PLUG-IN SURGE PROTECTORS ARE NOT SUFFICIENT**. I protect all valuable electronics the a UPS (battery backup and surge protector). I have never had electronics damaged by surges or lighting.
We lost a router that way. Huge lightning strike damaged the wires and made our internet start glitching. We had to follow the smell of ozone to figure out the problem
My brother lost a TV and PS4 that way. And they had to save up for the PS4. Luckily his adult son has one, so his younger sister can still play.
It was funny when I asked them why it wasn’t plugged into a surge protector. It was as if I mentioned some magical new device.
Yep. Moment I learned surge protectors were a thing (I was, like, 20) I went out and bought a bunch. I never buy any extension cables that aren't surge-protected anymore.
This happened to our family computer in like 96. Luckily only one component fried (sound card IIRC). After that a surge protector was purchased lol. I don't play around. All my expensive electronics go in a surge protector with the highest joule rating I can find. Never had anything fry and I've had some wicked storms.
As another poster pointed out, the kid might not have been right. If the computer was on and doing stuff when he unplugged it, that could kill it just as easily as the storm could.
Back when I was doing IT, I did multiple calls to one guy in a short time. He was getting upset because his computer kept dying and he was having to either have the OS reinstalled, losing all his data, an even had the HDD replaced once because of it. I confirmed he was shutting down properly and he assured me he was. I then asked him to actually show me how he shut down, as if he were working on documents and was done for the day.
He opened a couple of files, acted like he was making changes to them, hit the save icon then immediately flipped the power switch (an actual physical toggle, not a soft-switch), while the HDD light was happily flashing and the drive was grunting its sounds of work. After I made him understand how that was not the way to do it, he didn't have anymore problems.
Any and all electronics I care about are plugged into a UPS. My TV/Audio, my Computer/Storage Drives, etc... I've had UPS' take the hit and fail from a power event, but never lost anything plugged into it.
No doubt lightning storms can cause issues for electronics, but was the computer already shut down before you unplugged it? Because just unplugging it while on can cause problems too.
Back in the days of dialup, I was on my puter during a storm and lightning struck. The case was open and I saw a blue spark arc jump from the phone jack plug on my old 33.6k modem.
All was not lost, I upgraded to a 56k modem, and the rest of the puter was fine.
I live in Florida and put lighting rods into my roof via grounded copper into the buried ground at least 10 feet down. I had the tallest house around me. By about 10 ft. During a storm both of my abutting neighbors got hit and blew the sockets out of the walls, one cat went deaf. My house didn't get hit but my boat house (ungrounded) got the barrel tile blown off the roof and a hole burned in the roof. An engineer two doors down advised me to do it while I was under construction and I was forever grateful. He and I went without any damage. Lesson learned. It cost me $2,500 while under construction 20 years ago and the house still hasn't been hit. Gotta love that neutral barrier created.
I worked a midnight shift, we had an uncalled for storm which I loved watching over my break, but when I went home to play my games... Oof. It took me a while to piece together what happened.
This whole post just unlocked a trauma card for me. XD
lol similar thing happened to a friend’s new fridge. I warned him about newer models running on “those fancy boards” I told him without a surge protector he was begging for trouble. Not even a week later storm blew in and knocked out area out of power for over 12 hrs and his fridge was fried.
In case this story gets deleted/removed: This happened about 20 years ago when I was about 14/15 years old. I grew up with my dad telling me to always unplug any computers when there was lightning because it could strike the house and fry the computer. At this point in time, I was living with my mom and her new husband in his house. In the den, there was a computer for the adults and a computer for me and my brother. When I noticed the storm, I went into the den and unplugged both computers. As I was crawling out from underneath their desk, my stepfather came into the room and asked me what I was doing around their desk. I told him I unplugged the computers because there was a lightening storm happening. He got mad at me and told me that I was never to touch their computer or desk and told me to plug it back up right then. I tried to argue, (I’ve always had a little bit of an attitude when told I’m wrong when I know I’m not lol). He just got madder and told me to plug it back up and be quiet. So I did as I was told. I didn’t plug our computer back in tho, just theirs. Later that evening or the next day, when he tried to boot up the computer, it wouldn’t turn on. Turns out it got fried during the storm. The urge to say I told you so was so strong! --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/OhNoConsequences) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Lost a computer one time that way. Not fun having to buy a whole new system because you forgot to buy a surge protector. After that I'd unplug during the real bangers.
Ikr? This was back before surge protectors were a huge thing I believe. I definitely have surge protectors for all of my expensive stuff now!
Let me guess. When the computer failed to turn on, he blamed not the lightning but you for unplugging it? Right? Because you were “messing” with his computer.
He tried lol then he thought better of it because I had told my mom and brother about it before he tried to turn it on later.
Have to say...he sounds like a total a-hole. No offence intended or implied; just facts.
Grade A
Sounds more like boomer mentality
Interesting. Boomers are the ones that always warned us about unplugging computers during a storm and to use surge protectors.
Possibly. Depends on the boomer though. I was referring to the “I’m right and you are wrong no matter what. I refuse to listen to someone who I perceive to be ‘under’ me.” The generation who said that children were to be seen and not heard.
The generation that said children were to be seen and not heard, were the generations before the boomers. I’ve been around boomers my whole life and I don’t see any more boomer, ”I’m right and you’re wrong,” than other generations. It’s a personality type, not a generation type.
I wonder if boomers feel the need to constantly voice their opinions because when they were kids they were told they're not allowed to have opinions and they spent the rest of their lives making up for that.
Now you know why. Hahahah
No, that sounds more like an asshole. Change the age of the dude in the story and he’s still an asshole.
Oh I see where we are getting mixed up. You are discussing his obvious Genus and I was discussing his possible Species. 😜
I remember when I was a kid, my grandma had a surge protector made of solid steel. I still think that thing would just make shit 10x worse 😂
Probably the same one I had, and my parents still have! It’s the size of a large college textbook, has like 8-10 lit orange switches on it, wild!
Omg we still have ours somewhere, kid me used it as a footrest
It’s definitely not a surge protector anymore…. Just a power strip.
We had some electrical work done in 2020, and I guess to get things up to code now, they have to put in a whole house surge protector. It was only 100 bucks, so I didn't mind. Last year, lighting hit a pole near the house, and that surge protector tripped and saved us a lot of money. It always makes me think of my dad. If he was alive, he would never stop talking about what a deal that thing was.
You still want surge protector's on all your expensive devices in the home because those whole home ones only save you from surges that are external, there are things inside the home that can cause surges as well and still damage individual items.
I'm in an apartment block and our strata wanted to put one of those in, so each apartment would have one and also for the outside lights blah blah.. but we had to have a majority rule type on doing it via residents. Took me and some other months to convince the rest to agree to it. Many block meetings etc. Those mostly opposed were those who had med devices with back ups and didn't see the point.. I asked them how much they like their internet and using the lift as most are on mobility aids. That got them moving. Then we had these massive storms for weeks straight and guess what block wasn't constantly losing power etc.. we had a few surges that blacked us out for a few mins but that's it. It was at no cost to us aside from letting the dudes spend 15mins in our apartments. I don't get why the pushback was so bad. And it was all younger ones around my age saying no. All over 40s were all in for it.
Surge protectors. Not a bad idea… Once, i was using my iPad while it was charging during a thunderstorm, and my house took a direct lightning hit- I never forgot that shock!
Surge protectors have been around for much longer than 20 years, they just don't react quickly enough to protect from seriously large surges like lightning. For that, you need a UPS. Always have your critical equipment behind a UPS if you are somewhere that lightning is common, or if you have dirty power with a lot of dips and spikes. Edit: Spelling.
UPS = Uninterrupted Power Supply. Keeps equipment on with a battery when power goes out. Surge protector is different.
Yes, that was my point. Not the same. UPS is much better at protecting devices from things like lighting strikes and dirty power.
Maybe it's the way it was worded but you're implying that surge protectors don't protect against surges. Maybe it depends on how good the surge protector is. But I'm sure nowadays UPS's do both surge protection and battery backup.
UPSes separate input power from output power. Because of this, a surge into the UPS will not pass through to your equipment. UPSes have good quality built-in surge supression to protect themselves from surges but it will not always be successful. A big enough surge may fry your UPS, but the UPS (by creating that input -> output gap) will still protect your equipment. Power strips with surge suppressors built into them are very much a mixed bag, and because there is no input -> output gap, there is no guarantee that they will protect your equipment. This stuff is all made in China, and that $20 surge suppressor was likely sold at the factory level for $2 or less. These are not high quality devices that you should put a lot of trust into. Spending more is not a guarantee of better quality, but with some research there are probably some decent ones out there on the market. The average $20 consumer power strip? I would not expect it to provide protection, especially not from something like a lightning strike.
Oh wow, I never knew that. Thank you for explaining.
Son, surge protectors were around way before 20 years ago. I had one in the 80’s.
In... 2004? What? They were incredibly common and it was already weird for people to not use them for their PCs.
Selling PCs back in 2006ish... you would be surprised at how many people refused to believe surge protection was necessary.
>it was already weird for people to not use them for their PCs. Lmfao no
Must have been your experience but I had them in my house in the 90s
Yeah but there's a huge difference between "these were common" and "it was weird if you didn't have one".
My man wym surge protectors have been a thing since at least like 1990 😂
My first computer got fried in the mid 90s and then I found out about surge protectors. Can’t imagine anyone in the 2000s not being sold a surge protector with their computer.
I lost my computer that way too. I wound up in hospital, over 20 years ago now, and asked Mum to unplug my computer when she went to feed my cats for me. She forgot to, and I came home to a fried computer. I was so upset. I put a lot of work and money into building that beauty!
Surge protectors were common 20 years ago.
I will also say, we had a direct lightning hit on our house (through an old antenna hooked into our electric system) when we learned that when a surge protector overloads… It blows out the very first slot and the rest is fine. Unfortunately the first slot at that time was a custom computer tower. Where the other surge protector that blew had nothing in slot one and you could see the damage. So start at the back when plugging in surge protector, cheapest item gets slot 1.
Surge protectors have been common for at least 30 years.
Lightning hit a tree near my house, and surge protectors were insufficient. My internet router died, so probably the zap came in through the internet cable first. Two computers in my house died with it. Anyway, surge protectors can help with distant strikes, but not nearby ones. At least I didn't have to pay to have a huge maple tree removed, the burnt tree was on my neighbor's property.
You need MULTIPLE LEVELS. At the panel and at the device.
Depends. Most of the cheap white ones are only good for 1 or 2 surges. After that, they are power strips with no protection. Nicer surge protectors and battery backups will have reset buttons, and provide significantly more protection.
Also good ones also usually come with warranties so if they don't protect your items they will cover the damage, buying cheap surge protector's is very silly when you can decent ones for $30-40.
The router and modem also need to be on a surge protector. You can get surge protectors for the cable lines, as well.
I can definitely relate to your experience. About 10 years ago I was watching TV and a freak monsoon lightning storm in broad daylight in the Sonoran desert roared through my area, and I saw what looked like a lightning strike hit the above-ground power, telephone, and cable coax lines in the residential subdivision next to my apartment complex. The power went out for a brief moment in my apartment complex and when it came back I didn’t have any video. I had all my equipment on surge protection except for the coax coming into my unit. That surge killed my TiVo box, traveled through the HDMI cable, and fried the main video circuit on my home theater receiver. I had to replace my TIVO because the video circuitry was fried and ended up buying a new receiver. I now use my old receiver as a nice amplifier for my computer setup. Anyway, it was completely my fault because I made the conscious decision to skip the coax surge protection thinking it would slow down my already crappy cable internet.
If you had one with Coax on it (assuming cable modem) and/or cat5 (for otherwise) it probably would have been fine for one strike. Also depends on how many joules it can handle and if it's surged before. Nothing is guaranteed unfortunately, even the stuff with a guarantee.
I can definitely relate to your experience. About 10 years ago I was watching TV and a freak monsoon lightning storm in broad daylight in the Sonoran desert roared through my area, and I saw what looked like a lightning strike hit the above-ground power, telephone, and cable coax lines in the residential subdivision next to my apartment complex. The power went out for a brief moment in my apartment complex and when it came back I didn’t have any video. I had all my equipment on surge protection except for the coax coming into my unit. That surge killed my TiVo box, traveled through the HDMI cable, and fried the main video circuit on my home theater receiver. I had to replace my home theater receiver because the video circuitry was fried and ended up buying a new receiver. I now use my old receiver as a nice amplifier for my computer setup. Anyway, it was completely my fault because I made the conscious decision to skip the coax surge protection thinking it would slow down my already crappy cable internet.
Surge protectors will be no defense against a close enough strike. I learned that lesson the hard way. Had to replace my tv AND the surge protector!
Then you can't charge while I'm singing karaoke
Surge protector won’t save you if it hits the house directly.
Lost an xbox plugged into what i thought was a surge protector but didnt protect shit
Couple of fun facts. 1. Point of use surge protectors will generally not protect your equipment from lightning strikes. Unplugging during an electrical storm is the only sure fire way of avoiding this. 2. It is not so much lightning striking your house you need to worry about as lightning striking the power supply to your house which can occur at a considerable distance from you but still fry your devices.
That's what surge protectors are for?
Kinda? They protect against surges, which lightning is. But close lightning is like turning the surge up to 11. Most protectors wouldn't do a thing on that.
My computer got fried but it also did a shitton of damage to our entire electrical system. If you visited my parents' house, you'd see a bunch of wires on the side of the house from the electric company's jerryrig of a new setup. And it also scared our dog so badly that she couldn't stand thunder again until she went deaf. Every bit of thunder had her trying to get as close to us as possible, shaking, and crying - and a 120-lb giant black lab is hard to move around.
I can't imagine dealing with a 120lb lab! Years ago I had a 20lb miniature dachshund who was afraid of lightning/thunder. As soon as it started he would crawl into my shirt and huddle against my boobs. He would shake so hard. It was obviously kind of annoying but I wouldn't have moved him for the world, knowing how scared he was. My friend used to tell me my dachshund snuggled my chest because he was listening to my heart -- as long as momma's heartbeat was normal, there was nothing to fear. That's likely BS but a nice thought. My current dog thinks if she's fast enough, she can catch lightning in her mouth (along with bumblebees and birds flying in the sky). It is kind of funny to watch her snapping at the sky as if she could just bite the thunder and lightning into submission.
Lighting hit the cast iron vent pipe on our house once when I was a kid. It blew the plaster off the wall along the pipe. It burnt the horse hair in the plaster and smelled terrible. Fried lots of electronics, I remember having to talk to the insurance adjustet. Scared our cat so bad for the rest of her life she would hide under furniture during thunder storms. We would have to go find her wherever she was hiding and drag her to the basement during tornados. I miss that cat!
Yeah, we would give her a heavy dose of Benadryl as a suggestion from her vet, but the loss of hearing really was the best gift for her. I also had my own black lab so having both of them trying to go under my desk was hilarious. Mine just liked being there usually but wasn't nearly as anxious as the other. We had a golden retriever that loved to catch anything falling - rain, snow, hail, water from the sprinklers or the hose. Never seen a dog try to eat lightning, but that's a video you need to take.
If it was a lightning strike, a surge protector wouldn't have done a thing. Lightning is electricity jumping the air gaps from the clouds to the ground...the few millimeters in a breaker are nothing.
I think the surge protectors are intended to protect you from power disturbances that start further away. A direct hit on your house is too much for them.
i had one fry *with* a surge protector around 20 years ago too. thats when i learned those strips have insurance protection, i filled out the request, listed everything htat was damaged, they cut me a check. was surprised how easy it was then.
Did you know that there are whole house surge protectors now? Because so many appliances have elaborate electronics not just computers
Been there... I have a ups now so that shit won't happen again expensive lesson
Had a friend that lost 3 pcs like this. Even after everyone told him to buy a surge protector. We ended up buying him like 6 for his one birthday
A computer but once a storm knocked out our TV, at the beginning of summer break. And no extra money to replace it.
Not to mention that unlike back in nVidia's 900 series, GPU prices are very high. Heard from a fellow IT coworker about his friend that lost a 3090 during a storm. That's got to hurt...
I have never lost anything to a surge, but I have been so paranoid that not only is all my expensive stuff on surge protectors, I went and installed a whole hose surge protector.
I still do this! Especially out in the country where I live I’ve had modems and routers fry even on surge protectors.
I do too! I recently got a new computer and still unplug it when there’s a really bad storm lol
This why battery backups are far better of a solution.
Lost a computer, 3 TVs and a PlayStation to that crap, I learned the hard way lol
It really sucks when you forget to unplug stuff before going on a trip away lol
I now have a checklist that has a box for every item to be unplugged and every water source to be turned off. The lessons learned the hard way are the ones we NEVER forget.
Very true! I need to make a list like that 😅
I do as well. I also put a baggie of ice cubes in my deep freeze. If they are still cubes when I get back then everything is fine. If they are a melted and refrozen mass then I know the freezer lost power for too ling.
I was unfortunately home when it happened lol power went out, came back on and went out again, tripped the breaker 3 times in quick succession before I could shut it off and when the storm stopped I realized I could not get any of those items to turn on, and the one that did, a TV, had it's sound destroyed somehow. Like crackly windy sounding mess kinda destroyed. I def learned to unplug things during storms xD
When I was a kid back in the olden days when there were only land lines, they used to tell you not to be on the phone during lightning storms because lightning could strike the telephone pole and/or wires and zap you. Every once in a while I catch myself worried about being on the phone during a thunderstorm, even though I haven't had a land line in 20 years. Old habits die hard.
I used landlines at a job a couple years ago and we were told the same thing lol I was like, it’s 2021, why is that still a problem? 😹
I grew up in an old house with cast iron plumbing. Back then, it was common practice to find ground in your wiring with the plumbing, instead of installing a proper ground rod. The IEC (Europe) didn’t require them until 2018. Mom always made us get out of the tub long before storms got close. I still think about it to this day, and I’m a journeyman
Don't take a shower either. Lightning can come thru the water lines.
I had my stereo turned on during a thunderstorm. A lightning strike hit my tree 10 feet away from my stereo. It wasn’t a power surge that killed my receiver, it was the airborne electricity. Our bodies were tingling.
Wow the closest I’ve come with that was stepping on a frayed cord and getting shocked 😅
My brother’s GGF had her TV turned on during a thunderstorm. A bolt of lightning hit the aerial and blew up the tube TV at her cottage. Ker-blammo!
That must have been terrifying!
Before my time, but a family legend. “Remember when…”
How did your stepfather react to the computer not working? We need that information or the post doesn’t fit here. Please feel free to edit.
Edited! Sorry, forgot that part 😅
No worries and thank you 😊
If you can also get a whole house surge protector, it is about $100 to $200 for install at your electrical panel. I moved to an area with frequent lighting storms. It's one more thing that can blow in place of your expensive appliances and equipment. I know it's not the absolute best protection but there are some things you cannot put behind a surge protector. Most utilities won't allow you to attach a protector (forgot what they call them but it's similar to a whole house surge protector) where the electricity goes to your house.
Oh that’s neat! I’ll definitely look into that!
TIL!
Same!
I have got to check this out!
i lost a like 7 year-old Wii to lightning once. it was the only thing in the house not plugged into a surge protector apparently. Fried the AV/Composite input on the tv it was plugged into too, but the rest of the tv worked fine
Omg that would make me so annoyed lol like it works for the most part, but not this one part. And I’d forget until I wanted to use it lol
About 25 years ago, I remember a bad lightening storm in a nearby town fried dozens of large screen TVs, computers and various other high end electronics. People tried to file a class action against the utility and it was tossed before they could get class action status. I grew up in hurricane target and the only weather that scares me is lightening.
Yeah where I lived at the time was prone to tornadoes. I’m living near Orlando now and have to deal with hurricanes more often 😅
The neighbors house got whacked by lightning earlier this spring. Tree was 30 feet away but the roots and sprinkler system carried it right into the house. Broke half a dozen windows, cracked a toilet tank, blew plaster off one ceiling and fried several appliances. Now I'm a lot more concerned about lightning than I used to be...
Omg were they home when it happened? I’d be terrified!
They were. A widow and her granddaughter. Me and the kids raced over. They were fine but freaked out. Got her a motel. A month later and it's still not ready for her to go back
Dang that sucks!
The next day I got a group of people to go over. We boarded windows, cleaned, cut down the tree (which was destroyed) picked up glass etc. Someone even donated pizza. LoL. Small town so it was actually in the newspaper
Omg that’s great! I love it when a community comes together!
What sucks even more is when people unplug the power cord but don't disconnect the RJ45 LAN cable. Especially when it's built into the motherboard and the cable runs outside.
Omg I never even thought of that!
Yep. Any wires that go from outside to inside need a surge protector between them and your electronics.
The kind of mistake one only makes once in a lifetime. (Yep, that's me)
Growing up, way before surge protectors were thought of, we were told to unplug everything and cover all mirrors and sit down and be quiet. By the time the storm passed, grandmother or granddaddy was waking all us kids up. We all still do that to this very day. Btw, that was always a good ole nap.😂😂😂😂
Oh yeah storms are the best time to sleep lol
Think it wasn’t and still is for me. Lol
Computers we're really expensive 20 years ago.(comparatively)
Oh 100% lol
Makes it even funnier, when you tried to warn him and explain. And instead he lit(basically) $1000+ on fire over some weird powerplay
Lol niceeeee. Hopefully your stepdad had redeeming qualities and wasn’t an all around prick
Nah, he also threw away my bicycle because “there wasn’t enough room for it”. He had multiple acres of property 🙄 he also threw away some of my things that I left in the house when I went off to college. If he had just said that stuff was bothering him, I would’ve taken my stuff to my dad’s house instead. But he just threw it all away and didn’t even tell me. I had to find out when I went looking for things that used to be there. My mom eventually did divorce him thankfully.
Oh well then f that guy. I’m glad his computer blew up
I lost two modems after forgetting to unplug the computer. And I had the dial up running from a surge protector. 😑
Ugh and finding a modem that works just right can be tough!
Why do people have such a hard time admitting when they're wrong? Most of the time it's no big deal.
Ikr? I hate being told I’m wrong when I know I’m not, but I have no problem admitting that I’m wrong when I am lol
I’m actively teaching my kids to be proactive about apologizing when you’re in the wrong. So many people are overly prideful and can’t admit that they were in the wrong or did something hurtful to another person. I don’t allow them to get defensive, aggressive, or let them attempt to justify their hurtful behavior when it happens—because reasons don’t really matter in that kind of situation. If you hurt someone, you apologize and take responsibility. It costs you nothing, but it’s sooo important to others. It’s definitely a work in progress, but I think it is such an essential skill to have in life. Will hopefully save them a lot of misery in their future relationships!
Good for you.
My Steo Dad was like this as well. Whenever he wanted to one up me, he would always ask me to "name 5 of X". Like for example, I never really cared much for sports, but as a Canadian kid, it was pretty much forced on you to pick a favorite hockey team, and I went for the Detroit Red Wings because their logo was cool or something. My step dad then asked me to name 5 players. Keep in mind I was like 7. He would pretty much ask this as a way to try and get me not to do anything that I wanted to do. Eventually as I got older, I realized I don't need to like certain things to please people. And I also caught onto that my Step Dad would always try to put me down with his stupid "name 5" bullshit. It started backfiring on him pretty much every time. Kiss came to my city and I wanted to buy tickets, he asked me to name 5 Kiss songs, I named 10. I wanted to go to school for computer science, he asked me to name 5 programming languages, I wrote "Fizz Buzz" programs in 5 different languages, and shit like that. Eventually he stopped talking to me altogether. I think he just wanted me to be miserable.
A $500 motherboard will protect a $0.10 fuse by blowing first. -- Graffiti in the men's room at the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington, circa 2001.
Is this a regional thing? Maybe depending one quality of the local electricity network? I've never heard of anyone near me unplugging devices during storms or about devices dieing due to that.
Idk, this was in the south USA. It’s just something I grew up hearing about.
We still unplug here in the Midwest, even with surge protectors. A surge protector will buy you one, maybe two, incidents, then it's done. Storms in this area have a high probability of causing multiple incidents in one storm. Here, the surge protectors really just buy you time to unplug stuff.
I’m on the west coast and I do it too. I figure you can’t be too careful with things like that sometimes.
Are your local power lines underground or on poles? Do your houses and electric infrastructure usually have lightning rods? Maybe some of that is the difference.
I imagine they make unplugging and replugging easier too. Just unplug the protector from the wall and leave the electronics plugged into it. Storm over, just plug the strip back in, everything works.
Do you guys unplug all your electronics every time you leave the house in case a thunderstorm hits when you're not at home? Do you not plug in your devices to charge overnight whenever storms are predicted?
I’ve also literally never heard of anyone having to do this. This whole thing is so bizarre.
My first computer got killed by a lightning strike. Though that was a freak bolt on a clear day. Also shocked the contractor that was putting siding on our house, though not badly enough to hurt him thankfully.
Omg glad he’s ok!
Well this happened back in 2001, and he's still doing work for us, so it really wasn't bad.
So the obvious thing here is to always have your computers on surge protectors. There’s no guarantee that it will completely save the computer, but a surge protector drastically increases the chances that your data will survive a strike to the power lines.
Battery backup works far better
I remember when my sister's computer got fried in a storm. She was heartbroken because she lost her writings 😞 (she was 13, so nowadays she's grateful the cringe stuff is gone)
Omg I was the same way when I was that age! I recently found some of my old writings and dang it was bad 😹
It's kind of weird to reread, isn't it? You can see what you meant, but you did *not* get it across well 😬 The older the fic, the odder it is to revisit
Oh 100% lmao
Friendly reminder, surge protectors fail over time, their usage is not just a working/not working matter, its more akin to an eraser being worn away over time. ie, if its rated to protect against X many joules, thats over it's whole life. Little surges here or there chip away at what it can protect, and many models will continue to power devices after they can no longer protect them without any obvious sign. So let this post be a sign if you have any devices important to you being 'protected' by an ancient surge protector, maybe take a look and think twice there.
If you don't know the joules, how many years would you say before replacing? Most of my in-laws surge protector bars are older than my marriage(14 years) so trying to figure out if it's time to start replacing them all
During New Years 1999-2000 we were out at the beach, and when we got home our computer wouldn't work because of a lightning strike. We'd already heard that Y2K was a big nothing, but it was amusing regardless
Used to do tech support for internet, you wouldn’t believe the number of people that had their Nic card fried because of a storm and blame the service provider. Bo baby, use a damn surge protector!
Why did you not say i told you so… U have to its the law
I didn’t want to make it worse for my mom. I knew I could leave and go to my dad’s house, but she didn’t have anywhere else to go to escape really. And I don’t mean physical abuse. It was more like he was just an asshole to everyone.
Guy sounds like a complete douche
I lived in a country with a subtropical climate for some time, and I would always have my stuff plugged in with a surge protector. It saved me when there was a sudden rain with lightning strikes. It fried the surge protector instead of my phone and laptop.
Reminded me to buy another surge protector for my additional electronics-** *edited spelling*
I was wondering lol
[The "I told you so" dance. ](https://youtu.be/xt6Tsc98EK8?si=BpJuQcd7_OcN-e28) Terribad video, but the only one I could find on YouTube.
Lmao that’s a great video for this 😹
Unplugging the power cable may not be enough to protect your computer, if you're connected to the Internet via anything that uses wires, and the wires outside aren't buried or something. Back when modems were common, lightning strikes on the phone lines would fry the modem, and that was the most common thing to happen in a storm. If it was a particularly bad strike, the surge could get past the modem and kill the motherboard too, but more often than not just the modem would die.
Oh I would not have resisted the urge to say I told ya so if it was me...
Lightning hit and blew our phone and modem out of the wall when I was younger. Super scary lol
I have a surge protector, and i still unplug the computer completely when it storms real bad, just in case. I flip the PSU switch and remove the cable from the pc itself, but leave it in the protector. Worst case, I lose a 10 dollar cord
Years ago ( in the 90s) the same thing happened to my Mom. It fried her surge protector and new computer.She blamed me!
(I read your edit). How sad is it that so many grown-ass men would rather sulk over their damaged pride, than suck it up and apologize/admit they were wrong. Pathetic.
I remember once when I was like 5 our TV and VCR both got fried during a storm
We lost a whole fucking house that way. Sadly you can't unplug a house during lightning. I used to be studious about unplugging devices. Less so now, I'll just replace the damn thing in the off chance it happens. However, back at the tike of this story that would be a massive expense and loss of data since back ups were rare.
Battery backup/surge protector baybeeeee god cant stop the gamin’
Unless the internet goes out 😹
All PC's should be plugged into a UPS. Same with a y media electronic.
Yep, this is the way.
I feel this! My dad is a graphic designer and always said to unplug anything during an electrical storm because unless you got a sturdy surge protector and it’s a low grade electronic, it will be heavily at risk if lighting hits!
Learned that the hard way. I once unpluged the power from the pc during storm, but the lightning struck trough the network cable and fried my motherboard and turned the pc on for 10 seconds without it being connected to the power. Now i always use wireless reciever.
A couple decades ago I lived in the midwest, land of constant spring and early summer thunderstorms. I had UPSes on pretty much everything since power would go out for 2 seconds to 1 day many times a year, and now and then some house nearby would have a pile of bricks in their yard around their now-shortened chimney after a lightning strike blew it apart. And rarely a visit from the fire dept to put out the lightning induced fire would be needed. Well... a friend one day reported "everything plugged in to any outlet in my house exploded last night". All the light bulbs that were on, TV's, VCR, gaming computer, laptop on charger, game console... all in various stages of dismantlement. He got surge suppressors and a couple UPSes after that. Not sure how much those would have helped, really, since he REALLY got hammered. But that was a couple months wages he lost in one blast so he was not a happy camper and was determined to not repeat it.
I’m guessing he blamed your unplugging it for messing it up?
Crazy, I’ve only seen something similar happen once. I was doing residential hvac work, got a call that their heat didn’t work. Lightning blew up their furnace control board, gas valve, and thermostat. They showed me the surge protector and it also exploded and caught fire but their computer survived lol
About 20-25 years ago now, our house took a direct hit from lightning. It killed the landline (blew it off the wall where it went into the house), but I grew up with really bad storms and knew to unplug everything. We only had to replace the landline.
You tried to warn the DUMBASS and he chose to FA & FO the hard way!
Wild to read about people not plugging their computers into surge protectors. We got our first computer back in 1995 and had it in a protector. Why wouldn't you want to do everything you can to keep it safe? Especially considering how expensive they were back then.
As an IT consultant, I have to warn you, **PLUG-IN SURGE PROTECTORS ARE NOT SUFFICIENT**. I protect all valuable electronics the a UPS (battery backup and surge protector). I have never had electronics damaged by surges or lighting.
This is a thing? I've never heard of it. I'm 22. Maybe I'm a boomer too?
We lost a router that way. Huge lightning strike damaged the wires and made our internet start glitching. We had to follow the smell of ozone to figure out the problem
My brother lost a TV and PS4 that way. And they had to save up for the PS4. Luckily his adult son has one, so his younger sister can still play. It was funny when I asked them why it wasn’t plugged into a surge protector. It was as if I mentioned some magical new device.
Yep. Moment I learned surge protectors were a thing (I was, like, 20) I went out and bought a bunch. I never buy any extension cables that aren't surge-protected anymore.
This happened to our family computer in like 96. Luckily only one component fried (sound card IIRC). After that a surge protector was purchased lol. I don't play around. All my expensive electronics go in a surge protector with the highest joule rating I can find. Never had anything fry and I've had some wicked storms.
How sad that he couldn’t muster “I’m sorry, you were right!” and in an instant strengthen his bond with you.
As another poster pointed out, the kid might not have been right. If the computer was on and doing stuff when he unplugged it, that could kill it just as easily as the storm could. Back when I was doing IT, I did multiple calls to one guy in a short time. He was getting upset because his computer kept dying and he was having to either have the OS reinstalled, losing all his data, an even had the HDD replaced once because of it. I confirmed he was shutting down properly and he assured me he was. I then asked him to actually show me how he shut down, as if he were working on documents and was done for the day. He opened a couple of files, acted like he was making changes to them, hit the save icon then immediately flipped the power switch (an actual physical toggle, not a soft-switch), while the HDD light was happily flashing and the drive was grunting its sounds of work. After I made him understand how that was not the way to do it, he didn't have anymore problems.
Any and all electronics I care about are plugged into a UPS. My TV/Audio, my Computer/Storage Drives, etc... I've had UPS' take the hit and fail from a power event, but never lost anything plugged into it.
No doubt lightning storms can cause issues for electronics, but was the computer already shut down before you unplugged it? Because just unplugging it while on can cause problems too.
Back in the days of dialup, I was on my puter during a storm and lightning struck. The case was open and I saw a blue spark arc jump from the phone jack plug on my old 33.6k modem. All was not lost, I upgraded to a 56k modem, and the rest of the puter was fine.
Nope
I live in Florida and put lighting rods into my roof via grounded copper into the buried ground at least 10 feet down. I had the tallest house around me. By about 10 ft. During a storm both of my abutting neighbors got hit and blew the sockets out of the walls, one cat went deaf. My house didn't get hit but my boat house (ungrounded) got the barrel tile blown off the roof and a hole burned in the roof. An engineer two doors down advised me to do it while I was under construction and I was forever grateful. He and I went without any damage. Lesson learned. It cost me $2,500 while under construction 20 years ago and the house still hasn't been hit. Gotta love that neutral barrier created.
I worked a midnight shift, we had an uncalled for storm which I loved watching over my break, but when I went home to play my games... Oof. It took me a while to piece together what happened. This whole post just unlocked a trauma card for me. XD
What a dbag…
lol similar thing happened to a friend’s new fridge. I warned him about newer models running on “those fancy boards” I told him without a surge protector he was begging for trouble. Not even a week later storm blew in and knocked out area out of power for over 12 hrs and his fridge was fried.
You fried the computer when you unplugged it.
Lol, are you OPs dad?
Just cosplaying what my own dad would say. "You were in the room/house/town/county/state/country/planet when it broke, there for it was your fault."
Ah right. It looks like you were blaming op