When I moved into a 17th century farm in the Swedish countryside I quickly learned to dread the sound of thunder, especially when not at home. The reason was to

When I moved into a 17th century farm in the Swedish countryside I quickly learned to dread the sound of thunder, especially when not at home. The reason was to be found in the rather ancient and dilapidated power and telephone distribution networks which lacked - and still lack - things like overcurrent protection. The effect this gave on anything electronic in the house was, to put it mildly, not pretty. Lightning did not have to strike the power or telephone line, it was enough for a strike anywhere near one of these to cause an electronic-frying pulse to be delivered. I had a stack of ADSL modems to swap out fried ones after which I repaired or 'fixed' (as in disabled fried non-essential bits) those which weren't beyond fixing and added them back to the stack. When I finally got tired of repairing fried pieces of equipment I installed my own overcurrent protection system on the incoming power line after which the misery stopped. Initially it stopped because of the sudden and suspicious absence of thunderstorms, leading to all sorts of superpowers being ascribed to that grey metal cabinet I hung on the wall. Now, with that box and a glassfiber connection instead of the old copper phone line Thor is mostly welcome again, just as long as he refrains from starting forest fires - of which we've had 2 this summer, not on but ever closer to our land...