In order of most to least dramatic and greatest to least risk to companion equipment:

The worst amp failure I’ve experienced began with me thinking maybe I could smell something weird in the 24 hours prior to the failure but couldn’t track down the smell, then over the course of about 30 mins the right channel started sounding increasingly fuzzy, then a distinct burning chemical smell was clearly coming from the amp so I turned it off. A few hours later I tried turning it on and nothing happened. It was dead

The second most dramatic amp failure was the left channel getting a lot quieter than the right channel but the amp otherwise still working

The third most dramatic was the ‘peak’ indicators flashing even with the volume turned all the way down

Anyway, even in the worst event the drama was objectionable low, if I had to rank it I’d put it below getting a paper cut. The risk to human life, and any patched equipment, was similarly low

I did have a pair of speakers crapout on me and I never figured out why. One day they were fine. The next day they sounded horrible and if you gentle manipulated the cones they felt like they were filled with gravel. My partner said they’d turned the system on and it made a loud noise, then sounded horrible when they tried to play music, and there isn’t really anyway to fuckup pressing the power button and the play button on the CD player. A multimeter showed no DC at the speaker terminals, and the amp worked and sounded fine with other speakers. The tweeters on the speakers were fine, it was just the mid/bass drivers that died, no problems with the crossover, new drivers worked fine when installed.