For a simple protection circuit,
crowbars are often used to clamp the voltage of a supply line during voltage surges to protect components downstream. They typically consist of an input zener diode which, when it conducts, triggers a thyristor. In order to protect diodes from peak current surges and high dV/dt, the crowbar circuit could be modified to that it is triggered by high inrush current or dV/dt instead of absolute voltage. If the zener were replaced by a capacitor and the cap replaced by a resistor, this could be accomplished. In fact, when the input of a thyristor experiences a high dV/dt, they tend to latch on automatically without even needing gate drive so this could be explored more. As a final piece, an r/c low pass filter network after the thyristor and before the diode may be needed to allow the thyristor time to turn on before the surge reaches the diode. The time constant of the network should be as short as possible while still allowing time for the thyristor to turn on, so that it would not affect normal operation in modulation significantly.
This is just a simple protection circuit I came up with off the top of my head so use at your own risk!
also it is unidirectional as described but a bidirectional implementation could be realized relatively easily