Service entry surge protectors are available. Costs are generally in the $200-$700 range. If you really want to try to protect the home, I would invest in something in the mid range or higher.  Usually, the more you spend, the better the protection.

Many of the cheaper surge protectors (and particularly surge protection strips) do not do a good job of protecting against a surge of this magnitude. The damage gets done before the strip kicks in. (or burns up).

High voltage lines at the top of the poles.
These feed transformers
Which in turn feed low voltage lines (110/220V) nearer the bottom of the poles.

I could imagine a localized situation where the high and low voltage lines got crossed causing dangerous overvoltages.

In the country, people often have private transformers feeding only their own residence.  And, with underground wiring, a similar fault would be far less likely.  And, the effects would also be much more isolated.

Protection:
Surge suppressors will, in theory, protect from this kind of an over voltage, but they are normally used at "point of use".  

I believe that "Line Conditioners" are like "super surge suppressors", and could in theory be purchased for a whole house.

UPS devices have surge suppression/line conditioning built in with battery backup.  Normally they are connected to high power consumption devices with limited battery capacity.  However, they come in a variety of sizes and shapes, and some without batteries such as the large industrial centrifugal UPS devices.

One of the issues you will find.
Most residential houses have incoming service rated at 100 Amp x 220V or 200 Amp x 220V.  Depending what kinds of devices you use (home shop, electric heat, electric hot water, etc), one often never gets up to the 200Amp usage.  However, a 200 Amp UPS would be quite a large device, and may actually introduce dangers of it's own.

Not me. I couldn't sleep just now because the thunder woke me up. The lightning is pretty too. So here I am online enjoying the storm :)

 A TV is normally cheaper than a computer, unless you have a cheapy computer and a serious fancy TV. Also if you blow out a TV you don't really loose any data or half your life like with a computer.

 Well back to the point. Things like the post is about, unreliable power grids and also smart metering and etc.., are more reasons most homes should be going to battery systems and RE.

As was talked about in a post on smart meetering where you pay cheap rates at night and  much higher rates durring peak times, people could put the homes on batteries and inverters. Charge at night durring low rates and run from that power durring daytime peak rates, thus saving money. The other advantages of such a thing would also be power backup for when the grid goes down and surge suppresion from the grid.

 The backup system speaks for itself, if your running from charged up batteries who cares if the grid is down a few hours. The surge suppresion however may not be thought of often. In such a system only the battery charger would actually see the grid power. Would be easy to put chargers on saftey devices so any grid spikes cannot get to the batteries, easier than putting an entire house on one I would think.
 When thinking of the power a house uses, maybe a 100amp service, and maybe for 10 minutes a day the house hits 90amps all at once? Well you have to have those higher amps available 24Hrs just to have them for that 10 minutes, even though the house may only average a load of 20amps the other 23hours 50 minutes of the day.
 With a battery and inverter system you have all clean steady power, backup power, and you can average your usage out over the 24 hours  for charging batteries not just when used as form the grid. Add to that the fact you can make your own power anyway you can and add that to the batteries far easier than adding to the grid power.

I was running some lines of the house from the inverter and batteries, charged from the grid and whatever I could make myself. For me this worked well, that was before I rented the other house. Needing the inverter and batteries at the other house then to keep it off grid I put those lines here back on the grid again.
 For me I loved the system I had, large power items like the fridge, coffee maker, microwave, fans, etc.. were direct to the grid, but could be easily changed to inverter if needed. Items like TV, vcr, dvd, some computer stuff, couple of lights running from the inverter as a giant UPS and getting far better power than from our crap-op grid here. Lights on grid would be flashing and flickering with faulty power, the other lights on the inverter of course were steady and bright.

 And as said, any power I could make from the gennies I was testing and flying at times was extra power I did not buy from the grid. Even without the power I made, the peace of mind, better quality, and steady power was worth the trouble and expense to me anyway.
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nothing to lose