During the time of lightning I’ve unplugged everything except the power adapter of my modem and after sometimes I heard an explosion and the whole house was covered in smoke. And when it settled down all I could see was the burned modem and when I checked the PC , it looked like nothing happened to it. Then I got the power back after 2 days , and that’s when I realised the Ethernet cable really messed up my PC. Even the speaker that was connected to the PC got burnt.
Thankfully , The PSU is still working , and I don’t know the status of other components yet.
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I work in computer repairs in central London, and about ten years ago a lightning strike hit a power transformer I could see from my office
Firstly, it was the brightest light I’ve ever seen, and secondly, it blew every router and ethernet port for an entire post code!
Spent about a month dealing with the aftermath of that one
First thing where lightning will strike is router and first thing you should unplug when there is thunderstorm
Used to happen to one of my friends almost yearly back when we had dialup connections.
Then when he finally got DSL he got smashed via the ethernet cable. Kinda hilarious.
I worked at a small regional ISP back in the dialup days. We used to be able to track the path of a storm based on support calls the next day for fried modems. External modems would usually just be the modem itself dead. Internal PCI modems would take the motherboard with them.
Where do you live?
That’s so metal!
Plus a way better story than busting your side panel!
Sorry ’bout your PC still.
For future reference, they sell coax surge protection. May not help every time, but provides at least some form of insurance against stuff like this, even if it is a hassle to deal with afterwards. Just make sure you follow the instructions to the T
New fear unlocked.
Me staring at my ethernet cable hooked up to my tv pc. 👀
How tf do I prevent this
A few years ago during a thunder storm i was on my pc. Then lightning struck, my screen turned white, i was totally confused as it never happend to me, let alone getting a white screen. Turned my pc off and on again. Not even 5min later lightning struck again with the same white screen. I thought you know what i’ll stop there until the storm passes and un plugged everything in my room.
When the storm passed i found that my router died due to the storm. The ISP could come change it the week after. My PC was totally fine, and its psu still working today. That storm was around 5-7 years ago.
Downloaded too much RAM.
Electrifying. Bro quite literally got lightning speeds.
A lightning strike went down near out house (+- 500m) and it somehow killed a TV, the Cable TV box and a tiny PC (NUC) that was attached to it. We believe it was killed through HDMI, and that the HDMI cables acted like antennaes.
Well…
I’ve had a laptop get struck by lightning through one of the video output ports, welcome to the club. :/
Follow up question – can you get insurance for this sort of thing? This makes me paranoid now lol.
This is why you get a surge protector/ups with ethernet passthrough and put everything that is connected to your pc behind it (computer, monitors, external power devices (wheel+pedals, powered usb hubs) etc). The lightning can jump through usb and video cables as well.
No one else in my home has surge protectors on their computers or the router, so i have my ethernet cable going through my surge protected ups to avoid this and every single device connected to my computer gets it’s power after it has gone through the ups
Snipe of the century
That really sucks for you, I’m sorry! Based on that last picture, I’m just glad your house didn’t catch fire, that looks so close like it tried. Glad you’re okay, op!!
This happened to my buddy Eric once.
Oh shit
The OG lightning cable
So the Ethernet ports on surge protectors are not bullshit after all.
Always unplug dsl/dialup modems, land-line phones and other devices without a surge protector during a storm
Thank you for this wonderful ad for surge protectors.
Id definitely make sure when you replace everything you use a surge protector and that it’s properly grounded. Make sure it’s not just a power strip. I wouldn’t really bother with a surge protector for the Ethernet lines in the house unless there are Ethernet lines that run out of the house. I see fiber so if that’s the only line that runs to the outside for the data stream then the lines inside are relatively safe since fiber is non conductive. With that being said I’d check all your existing wires and cables to see what needs to be replaced, and test them using a device you don’t mind losing in case it damages anything else.
Thanks soldier for this information. I wish you all the best o7
That’s true POE
Yeah this is why I unplug my desktop whenever I’m gone for a while even though I have a surge protector, don’t want $3000 dollars of my money to go down the drain
Thank you. I always unplug my.power during storms but…. Never thought to unplug the router.
We had a lightning storm a few years back that completely fucked our router, stuff was rattling around the inside. Since then I don’t trust those power line adapters you see a bunch of places solely because of it
Had something similar happen twelve or so years ago. Took out my computer, router, switch, Vonage phone adapter and a few other smaller things. Replaced everything but the Vonage adapter and forgot about the Vonage account, only to have it’s balance thrown to some collections agency. Will never use Vonage again.
Well that settles it, I’m going full wifi during a storm lol
The same thing happened to me a couple of years ago.
There was a thunderstorm near where I lived but I didn’t care too much because it felt a bit far away and my PC was off and connected to plug with surge protection and so was the router. At the time I never have considered that Ethernet plugs are power conductive.
All the sudden my router exploded with a thunder and the power went out for a few moments.
When the power came back, my computer didn’t turn on for some 15 mins. But for some reason it did afterwards, and I didn’t notice any damage except the Ethernet port. Had to buy a PCIe board just to have a new Ethernet port and not waste 100€ on a new mobo.
To this day I still use those components but learnt a valuable lesson
Read your other comments. This is an absolute horror story. I did not know lightning can cause damaged to set top box via dish, and then to TV via hdmi cable from set top box.
Will unplug all these things next time there is a thunderstorm.
I would not trust that psu. Actually I wouldnt trust any component after this. Sucks but at least you’re ok
I had this happen to a Lenovo ThinkCentre I used to have. Lightning strike fried up the Ethernet, PC still worked fine but Ethernet didn’t. Had to go and order an Ethernet PCI-E card to use Ethernet in the PC.
I had a graphics card get fried through the HDMI port connected to my TV from lighting. I think the TV got fried. I can’t remember. I just remember the graphics card because I was able to warranty it.
Had this happen on two separate occasions as a teen.
First time; It fried the pc and router.
Second time; It fried the router, like cooked it, but both pcs booted in the house and only had the ethernet ports unusable. Ethernet cards fixed them and they had no issues working other than the motherboard’s didn’t have working ports for ethernet.
Eventually our ISP was fiber, this reduced our risks and never really had the issue again. When I moved into my old house, there was exposed ethernet so I got an inline surge protect for it, but never had it utilized thankfully.
Imagine not having a surge protector or battery backup
I guess fiber internet don’t have to worry about this?