Not necessarily, lightning is an extreme electrical phenomenon. I'm no way an expert, but from what I've read... 1. Lightning doesn't have to hit the tallest o

Not necessarily, lightning is an extreme electrical phenomenon. I'm no way an expert, but from what I've read... 1. Lightning doesn't have to hit the tallest object. Electricity doesn't flow into the lowest-impedance path either. It's just probability at work - lightning is more likely to hit the tallest object, and when an object gets a hit, more current flows into the lowest-impedance path, but other path will receive their shares. "Electricity finds the path of least resistance" is only a rule-of-thumb when the resistance of one path is two order-of-magnitude smaller than other path, then approximately 99% of the energy is applied to the short circuit. But when you have a lot of different path with impedance of similar order-of-magnitude, every path will receive some energy. If the object is a lightning protection system, it has incrediblly low impedance than other objects, so it will do its best to redirect all energy to ground and ensure that the probability of hitting other objections is very low, but still, if there's an unintended high impedance path within the protected system (e.g. two large metal structures are grounded separately, but not connected with a think metal bar, a voltage difference can develop between the two), then some energy won't be redirected to ground as intended and will attempt to flow through other objects with lower impedance, and it'll destroy other objects along the way. It's why we still see damages from time to time. Worse, in nature there's no such conductor designed for lightning protection, all objects are vulnerable, it's just some are a bit more vulnerable to others, like the tallest tree. 2. Lightning doesn't have to hit you directly to cause injury. Recall Electrical Safety 101, if you connect a 110V/220V "hot" wire to a grounded object, the low impedance ground will keep the voltage of such object low to ensure safety. But if it's a HV line, it's another story, the Earth itself is not a perfect conductor, the point closer to the voltage source will have less resistance, thus a voltage gradient forms, there can be a significant voltage difference on Earth between your legs.