I'm not trying to claim it was good engineering. However, I can see where a catastrophic event in a very complex device which triggers a short circuit, a situation which has the potential to interfere with other circuits, could have led to this near miss.

As far as engineering goes, the USS Scorpion was sunk by a failure of engineering somewhere. All of the likely scenarios imply such failure. Same with the USS Thresher.

So much for the infallibility of engineering in critical systems. It ain't always there. To claim that complicated systems, no matter how destructive a failure would be, are immune to unforeseen and cascading engineering mistakes and material failures would be silly. I know you aren't doing that, but I can't tell what you are doing.