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The work of a surge suppressor is to limit AC voltage from rising and going beyond a specified threshold like the plus or minus 200 volts. This is why surge suppressors have been used to prevent most equipment from getting damaged by the high voltages caused by the transients. Surge suppressors are more useful on lightning prone areas without which much equipment would get damaged and thus require to be bought almost every other day. Semiconductors are the devices that are used for making the surge suppressors. Here what needs to be done is to short-circuit in order to cut the flow of current. This is done in order to avoid the flow of current that is brought about by lightning and the current will be earthen and hence causing no damage. In order for the surge suppressors to work it requires a 3-wire AC power that must be connected to the power supply. It also requires an adaptor also known as the cheater which permits the 3-wire to work hand in hand with a 2-wire outlet or in some cases the extension cords and defeats the connections that have been done underground thereby rendering most surge suppressors ineffective. Surge suppressors are extensively used with most semi conductor-based electronics plus the hardware of computers like the monitors, disc drives, printers and modems. However, the surge suppressors should not be relied upon to give total protection incase of lightning driven transients. The safest method of dealing with this is to make sure all the hardware that are more likely to be affected are plugged into a suppressor box and to unplug the surge suppressors incase they are not being used especially if you are living in a thunderstorm prone vicinity.