Quote:
Originally Posted by Skip
I'll let him answer but my experience is that they actually attract lightning, but you can still get a lightning strike nearby that comes into your house via the cables/wires. Remember the heavy roof wire leads the lightning into the ground at your foundation. It can still come in via the burried TV cable, etc. I know of one instance where the lightning hit the roof shingles and not the spikes and still caused a fire to the house. They are not 100% effective. But they might help. Hard to collect data on a system like that.
Skip
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Lightning rods along with a full lightning protection system are designed to intercept a lightning strike that is already occuring to a structure and route it safely to ground, preventing a fire and reducing any damage to wiring, appliances and the building itself.
Lightning rods do not attract nor are they designed to attract lightning. Since the descending stepped leader of a lightning bolt doesn't 'decide what to strike' until it is very close to the ground, lightning will only strike a lightning rod system if it already happens to be in (or very close to) the lightning's path.
Check out what SpaceX does to protect their rockets.