Actually there is a lot of truth to it. In simple terms he is building a very simple current shunt around the building giving or a low impedance path around the building for current to follow and flow through. Ever seen utility guys working 750 KV hot utility lines. They actually crawl out on the lines or work from a helicopter. They are wearing a Chain Nail suit made from silver. If they were to somehow become grounded, the suit shunts the current around their body. Some call it a Faraday Shield.
I do a bit of mission work in India and Africa with my church. I have been to a few villages where lightning was constantly killing and injuring the people in the villages. Lighting would strike nearby trees and discharge through the ground and the step potential was high enough to kill and injure villagers in their grass huts. I did some research many years ago when I first heard about it and found a real cheap easy solution. All we did was obtain scrap barb wire, fence wire, telephone wire, or whatever wire we could source locally dirt cheap or free in most circumstances.
We dug a shallow trench around each grass hut or structure and made a ground ring out of whatever wire we could get our hands on. Since doing that no villagers have been harmed in their huts when lightning strikes. Still some get injured or killed when caught outside the home, but none inside a protected shelter.
OK now I will put on my Engineers hat. If this were me building a facility from the ground up, I would not use a ground ring in a explosive facility. I would use what the military uses in the dessert ammo bunkers, or any bunbker any where. During WW-II Herbert Ufer figured out the best way to stop static and stray current very effectively. Telephone offices, radio towers, data centers all use it. Install a UFER ground in the concrete foundation. Very similar to the NEC Concrete Encased Electrode, just beefed up. You can bury a copper mine around a building and not even come close to an earth impedance of a UFER ground. Even in the dry dessert you can easily achieve 1 Ohm or less earth impedance. Never ever any worries about a ground ring eroding and dissolving.
If I were to use a ring I would use cathodic protection like all oil pipe lines and airports do. It is just too important to bury and forget it.
