Blanks are no joke. We fired them during exercises using BFAs and never thought anything about it. Years after that though, a buddy of mine gave me several stripper clips of 5.56mm blanks. He told me that they were good for destroying hornet nests. I wasn’t quite believing him. He told me to get about 2.5 feet from the nest and just pull the trigger. So I did, and the nest (bigger than a grapefruit) was literally obliterated into very small fragments. All the hornets were either dead, or on the ground dying. I was impressed, and a little surprised.
In my Field Med class maybe half had BFAs. I was not among them. Had to cock after each shot. Shooting blanks at each other in the dark.