Because of recent thunderstorms in the area I will occasionally shut down and disconnect my system from the powergrid and internet temporarily. For 24/7 operation I use surge protectors, but these will not save my system in case of a lightning strike. I wonder how others protect their systems against lightning strikes, if at all ?

There are special "connector strips" / "multiway connectors" (not sure if that's a proper translation) with overvoltage protection.

on a hill, and all cabling runs underground in my neighborhood, trees take the hits if the lighting decides to comes to us... more worried about wind damage... and i have a battery backup to for my quad/260 pc... it'll last about 10 seconds when under full load....

Thanks for your replies so far :) Lightning does strike in the town where I live. It struck across the street (a casual 20 meters) while I was watching a few months ago. A few weeks ago it struck within 500 meters twice. It is a serious consideration. I know that the surge protectors MrS is referring to are not sufficient. Those are the ones I have for 'standard' messups by the power company. I did think about a UPS (like zpm did) for power outages, but I need at least 2 of the budget variant for the machine. As 6Teacher suggests I do gracefully shut down the machine and unplug everything, including internet cabling. Unfortunately that is difficult when not around, then again the hydropower machine is not something you leave running unattended because of the heat. It *IS equipped with a smoke detector by the way.
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