Did you have your electronics connected to good quality surge protectors, or were you just relying on the whole-house surge protector? I've read before that whole-house protectors are meant more for reducing fire risk than protecting sensitive equipment and you're supposed to use them in combination with plug-in surge protection. Opinions on whole-house protectors are very divided among electricians, it seems like half think they are critical safety equipment every house should have, and half think they are completely useless snake oil.

Another issue is quality of plug-in surge protectors. The biggest risk is that you get a fake one that is essentially just a power strip no or minimal protective components. Old surge protectors or ones that have absorbed a surge can silently lose their protections when the MOVs fail, so it's important to replace them regularly. I always buy good quality surge protectors from name brands of power equipment, but honestly I don't replace them nearly as often as I should.

Finally, it might be worth checking how good your house's grounding is. You can have the best surge protectors in the world but if they can't actually dump that voltage to ground they aren't going to do much for you.

Some of the dead equipment was indeed connected through a high quality surge protector. From what I’ve read, they just can’t do much about the amount of energy in a lightning strike.

I live in a super high lightning area. No matter how good your protection, if you get struck directly, everything is fried. But that's not your biggest problem as you'll rarely if ever get hit directly. The electronics killer is static electricity that builds up everywhere during an electric storm. For this your DB and plug lightning/surge protectors work quite well. The rod on the roof helps preventing direct strikes, good grounding helps with static build-up. You can even put a copper wire around the perimeter of your property to equalise/move the static electricity. Nothing helps when you get struck directly.

I live on a ridge and that's the first question I asked. The seller pointed to a healthy pine tree some 50 feet tall, so it seems, about 100 feet away and said, no need.

There are a couple more near it, unscathed, and in my time here, the nearest hit, by the 5 second rule, has been 2 miles away.

5280 ft/mile / 1100 ft/second -- 5 seconds per mile, lightning to thunder.

I would still consider it, but since the ground under the house is mostly quartz rock, I wonder about the grounding.

I tacked a strip of metal pigeon spikes to the apex of my roof and ran some wire to a ground rod. It's more repellant than protection, which is good enough for me.