This is a pretty good article on electrostatic discharge Although this may not answer any of your questions. IMHO, you can not protect any sensitive electronics completely from lightning. It is good practice to unplug both ends of all your cables when a lightning storm is in the area. Also you should have a very detailed insurance policy. Also to clarify my previous post, nothing was connected to an AC source. My mount, and camera were connected to my laptop and my laptop was connected to my LAN. My guess was that the LAN connection did the dirty deed and fried my gear. The laptop was not powered on at the time.