I never was exposed to the term either. I have many courses and sessions in industrial safety and never had this mentioned to me.
I ran across it while researching something else, and would like more to be aware of this deadly possibility.
As to lightening, lots of discussion about it, but little hard info on it.
When building my house, I wanted lightening protection, and was willing to pay for it. 5 different contractors plus the power company all had opinions on how it should be done, no 2 opinions were the same. And none would offer any kind of damage guarantee what so ever.
yeah....I been through a lot of what you have, too. Especially on how to protect the house.
You can buy a surge protector for incoming power but it will NOT protect your downstream wiring in the home from induced current caused by nearby strikes. There are tremendous electric fields caused by strikes and home wiring can’t be protected by a surge protector on the incoming power feed.
In a lot of cases it is a crap shoot IMO. The best you can hope for is that a strike doesn’t set your attic on fire...:0)
I have, however, seen dissipaters installed at some test ranges I’ve been to that seem to work well in dissipating field potential buildup for buildings with a lot of expensive equipment in them. Instead of the traditional attracting spikes connected to ground straps, they are much like honking big wire brushes that dissipate the potential to ground causing lightning to seek elsewhere. Funny looking things.