Every February, for the past several hundred years, Mexicans have gathered in San Juan de la Vega for the Festival of the Exploding Hammers. That’s right–the Feast of San Juan de la Vega involves several explosive sledgehammers, which have homemade firecrackers tied to one end. As you can see in the video above, following the obligatory suspense-building, the hammers are detonated by striking them onto lengths of metal.

Though the festival looks like it would leave few survivors in its wake, tens of thousands of participants descend on San Juan de la Vega each February, and there are medics and police officers on standby to make sure that proceedings don’t go terribly awry.

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