On Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:58:01 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

I've lost - or been handed the kit, broken - at least three wifi
equipped routers that dies postmajor thunderstorms.

In short lightning kills anything. Its at least unlikley to destroy a
cable buried underground, even if the kit at each end goes pear shaped.

Yep anything with a few feet of wire attached is vulnerable to damage
froma lighting strike within a few hundrd yards. Had an IP webcam
and network card connected by 12' Cat5 zapped... The Webcam still
works, just not via the ethernet port, several components on the card
were carbonised.

--
Cheers
Dave.