Bummer. I guess that's the first time something like that has ever happened? Imagine hundreds of years of developing firearms, and now an accident. Back to chucking spears...
Naw. The point is that when something like that happens, as it particularly often will if the preparatrory phases of such development are inadequate or slipshod, the resulting problems should be siezed upon and resolved, both preventing similar future incidents and ensuring that the lives of those lost in causing progress to occur were not in vain.
Instead, the OICW program's material was rewritten to indicate that no incidents of the sort involving military personnel had occured. And civilian tech engineerss are easily enough replaced anyway, I guess; the damn things breed like rabbits.
-archy-/-