If you're really worried about lighting, erect a lightning rod. It'll find the best, highest path to ground (almost always), so provide one. Lightning can do o

If you're really worried about lighting, erect a lightning rod. It'll find the best, highest path to ground (almost always), so provide one. Lightning can do odd things. I had a 500m, underground conduit holding 25 pairs of twisted pair copper that came up and terminated beside my desk. The other end was in another building and there was various equipment connected through this data cable. Grounded at both ends (and some folks at this point know the rest of the story). Lightning struck a hickory tree near the cable route, about halfway. Not enough to kill it but tore a nice strip of bark off all the way down. The ground surge from that induced current in the cable and my pipe coming out of the floor vomited out a small quantity of vaporized copper and the remnants of the teflon plenum insulation it had been covered in. Like a black powder cannon. Stippled the ceiling with an interesting pattern. A couple of the connected bits were not fried, more things were. The other end had "a weird noise" I was told. it was 50ft higher in elevation than my side so I assume that air pressure acted as a cap on that end and they just heard air intake past the wire from their side.