How do big piles of loose bullets in ammo canisters keep from going off?

Question

I’ve been getting a lot of firearms videos on my YouTube and such and I was wondering how those big ammo boxes full of loose bullets are safe, and how do they keep from being poked on just the right spot with the weight of the pile making a loose bullet fire?

In: 0

Answer 1

To trigger the primer, setting off the bullet, you need a fairly sudden collapse of the primer. Unless a considerable amount of weight were resting on a single bullet, and that bullet’s primer were somehow pressed against a sharp point such that all of the weight was borne by the point on the primer, and someone gave the box a violent enough shake to collapse the primer, nothing would happen.

The odds of this happening are for all practical purposes zero.