Andrew Tuohy of Vuurwapen Blog:

I have been conducting experiments relating to firearms for a number of years, some of them quite mundane and others rather unorthodox. Many of the unorthodox experiments have never come to light, either because nothing of value was learned, or because I had decided to compile their results over a long period of time before releasing the data.

One series of tests which falls into the latter category relates to what, exactly, makes guns blow up. We’ve all seen photos of exploded firearms and bloodied hands or faces that result from a “kaboom,” or catastrophic failure of a firearm or the ammunition it fires. As a result, a lot of people exercise an overabundance of caution relating to any ammunition that “looks funny” to them – even going so far as to discard cases with tiny dents in them, for fear of causing an explosion.

While it’s always a good idea to err on the side of caution when working with items that contain 1,000 times more pressure than a car tire, it’s also a good idea to have an understanding of what can really cause a catastrophic failure. And my experimentation has shown to me that the common knowledge relating to this topic is entirely wrong…

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This is a clickbaity sentence, but the results seriously surprised me. Amazing what happens when you actually test things.