damn, that is horrible! sorry. how did it happen? not using a surge protector? really curious about this topic because i love having new anxieties. -_-
What's REALLY horrible is that it's my own fault. I have 2 surge protectors under my desk. One where all 6 sockets are protected, and one where 4 are protected and 4 are not. When setting up the one where only half are protected, I made sure to put my PC, monitor and TV in the protected sockets. Now, I have at some point plugged my PC into an unprotected socket. Probably a stressful morning where I needed to charge my phone for a bit and I wasn't paying attention. So the other day, lightning struck, my PC turned off, and I smiled confidently, knowing that I had my shit taken care of. Tried turning it on the day after, and nope, no dice. The good thing is that my RAM survived (done a lot of memtest86+), and I had my 690 in another machine for testing. So it seems only the motherboard or the CPU or both has fried (and possibly PSU). Can't get my hands on a good replacement for either, so upgrade time it is.
Now, onto your new anxieties

Turns out, after reading up on it and talking to an electrician, that a regular surge protector that you plug into the wall socket (called a fine surge protector i think) isn't necessarily enough to protect against lightning strikes. You need an extra box in your fuse box (called a coarse surge protector) in your fuse box for that. So I've gotten the missus to agree to have an electrician install one of those, and I've signed up for insurance in case of lightning strikes to prevent another disaster like this.