Do you think you should unplug everything during a thunderstorm?

[Youkai]

you heard about me and minox now

well I was talking about people living here in Germany that I know or friends of mine know

No idea how the quality of the buildings in your country is compared to those here in Germany ... I believe there might be hugh differences ! (as an example, in Japan it feels like the smaller Buildings are made out of paper XD but than again if they get destroyed by a earthquake its cheap and fast to rebuild)

 

[teegeeack]

As far as I can tell surge protectors do little other than frustrate ethernet over powerline and maybe provide an insurance policy in some cases that is bastard hard to claim from, and some modern ones also include auto power off which really sucks when you have your TV and cable box plugged into one.

if i'm not mistaken and as far as i can tell, the run of the mill cheapo surge protector doesn't even give any indication that its surge protection is functional and ready. so even if you buy one and it initially works, it can get zapped by surges and lose its ability to block surges, becoming nothing more than a non-protective power strip -- completely unbeknownst to you.

i reckon that whole "you don't even know whether it's guarding against surges or not" paradigm is bordering on criminal. it fails the generic criteria of truth in advertising: it doesn't give the owner enough info to know whether or not it's accomplishing its primary advertised function. and yet that's been going on for decades.

 

[WiiUBricker]

Thunderstorms aren't too common in England unfortunately so I just leave everything in the plugs.

Why unfortunately? Do you like it when your place is struck by lightning?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I used to when I was younger, but not anymore. Thunderstorms are fairly rare where I live and I don't want to be without all my electronics for hours anyway
Nothing bad ever happened.
I do have surge protectors on most of my electronics but I'm not sure they are doing much since my contacts aren't grounded.

 

[Judas18]

Why unfortunately? Do you like it when your place is struck by lightning?

Thunderstorms relax me.

 

[AbyssalMonkey]

Ground wires are a blessing. I've had a thunder strike my house when I was like 10 while I was in the shower before. Heard an extremely loud bang and lights flickered for a parcel. Scared shitless I got out and asked my dad and he said thunder hit.

Having a chimney with metal topping and a nice wire to ground solves all my issues. On the one in a million chance that lightning hits the power line going to our house, if I'm not mistaken, the power transformer takes the hit instead. PAst that, I gleefully play on my computer in thunderstorms (like right now!).

I've actually never understood why people go around unplugging things. To me it's on the same level of unplugging your modem at night because you are afraid of people hacking you over the internet. If I'm more worried about anything, it's tripping the breaker on my room and causing HDD corruption/damage. Whenever my AC kicks in it seems to be ridiculously close to tripping it. Yesterday I had my second hand monitor I knicked from an old home falter to where I had to literally unplug it to get the screen to refresh.

 

[FAST6191]

There is the raising earth problem, especially if you have an old school staked earth like many properties in the US. I am not really sure what there is to cover -- it hits one of the three wires that go around your house and raises the potential of one of those to a few thousand volts and most electronics is not built to handle it and most insulation might handle a lot but your electronics might provide the easier path.

Unplugging things is then not so much paranoia as prudence for many people. Especially those that might live in tall houses on top of hills/high points and don't have lightning negation (others mentioned it is a thing on newer builds, and I do live on the newer builds in this estate, which is to say this is Edwardian rather than Victorian). If a mad dash around the house saves me having to replace items, or claim on contents insurance I tend not to have, then if you are there and a lightning storm is happening or coming in then it is a free thing you can do to save you hassle.

 

[Wellington2k]

I've had a couple TVs break because of a storm. I unplug everything now, just in case, but usually only if the storm has really bad lightning.

 

[Smash Br0]

I unplug any device I'm not actively using. I've lost a TV and a router to lightning before.

 

[Logan Pockrus]

I've had a desktop PC and a refrigerator die to a storm. PSA: if your refrigerator dies, get a new one as soon as possible! It smells God awful very quickly.

 

[SonicCloud]

Nope

Probably because here they arent that common?

 

[Ricken]

I keep surge protectors in my surge protectors, and act like nothing ever happened