While doing my national service and shooting with the FAMAS ,I never noticed any difference between live mags or blank ones.
The UK used to use the same magazines for both. With the A2 modification to the SA80 system, however, they’ve moved over to bright yellow magazines for blank firing with an attachment which is supposed to prevent your being able to feed live rounds into it. The new blank firing attachment allegedly will function as a bullet catcher for the first round or two as well…
All I know is that blanks fouled the M-16A1/A2 so much, we tried to fire them as little as possible in order to avoid cleaning sludge out of our weapons all night. 
Not a problem with our 7.62mmSLRs (L1AI) as they rarely managed more than one shot with a blank firing attachment, which then necessitated using the cocking handle to reload.
This rather slowed down the pace and fun of supposedly semi-auto engagements.
I just re-read your reply Nick, and a memory occurred.
Our guys used to have 4 50-gallon drums, each filled to within a couple of inches to the rim with a cleaning fluid that cleaned the disassembled weapon components overnight, after firing blanks on an excercise or ceremonially. The barrels would be put in one drum, the receivers in another, and the trigger mechanisms in another, the various springs and such in the fourth drum. Naturally, the smaller parts were in wire mesh baskets in the drum.
Upon arrival in the armoury the following morning, the parts of the weapons would be removed from the various drums dried, lubricated, and the weapons re-assembled.
The drums and liquid content were then sent across to vehicle maintenance, where the liquid served as cleaner/de-greaser, much as it had with the firearms components. In return, clean, empty drums were sent to the armoury.
And the name of this wondrous liquid? . . . Coca Cola.
Yes, I am open to the fact my informant, a former soldier, may have been “pulling my leg” but I don’t think he’d have reason to, being that he’s 86 and a WW2 and Vietnam Veteran, and his weapons-cleaning tale is corroborated by the Special Forces Vietnam Veteran friend of mine. Both men independently assert that what I’ve outlined above is true.
Knowing that, as you can imagine, I don’t often these days drink soda-pop of any description.
Kind Regards, Uyraell.
Coke has just a bit of Phosphoric acid in its mix, this is a well known corrosion penetrant/ cleaner in industry. It takes a fair long soak in the stuff as the content is small, but it will work. But dont let this make you nervous about drinking coke, the acid in your gullet is far stronger than the wee bit in soda, nor does corrosion, and crud constantly renew itself as you body does.
Many Thanks TG, I hadn’t realised that info.
I don’t habitually drink soda-pop any how, as it’s expensive here in NZ.
Coffee is my beverage of choice, and, very very rarely, Merlot, still more rarely, beer.
Kind Regards, Uyraell.
Yea I believe the US govt. is still looking for one off the North Carolina coast. Lost 40 or 50 years ago. A pilot on a training mission was having engine trouble and didn’t want to crash with the bomb on board so he ditched it in the ocean.
In the movie “Men of Honor” about Navy Salvage Divers, they portray the recovery of a lost Nuclear device, shortly after which, the main character loses his lower right leg, pushing a crewman to safety on deck as a sheer-leg tripod wire stay breaks loose as the recovered device is hoisted aboard the dive-tender vessel.
That event actually took place in real life: a result of similar circumstances to those you describe.
There is a Nuclear device off the coast of Portugal, and at least two others similarly on the seabed at the Gibraltar end of the Mediterranean. Rumour has it, that two more are on the seabed off the coast of Sakhalin, though being Russian, the existence of those has never been admitted. As Chevan says, both sides lost a few weapons over the years.
This makes a live-round misfire look small by comparison, even though more “newsworthy”.
Kind Regards, Uyraell.