Others posted what happens, a balloon whipping around but on a really destructive scale. I've also seen the hoses attached to these cylinders bust a fitting and tear appart a room as it was whipping around. Of course after this happened the company put in one hell of a safety cage in the test lab! One of our engineers took a big hit on his back as he was diving away...damn lucky it didn't hit him in the head.
Each time a new size cylinder is qualified (for the aircraft industry at least) it has to go through a gun shot test (and fire tests). The cylinder must remain intact (no castastrophic failure of the cylinder other than the bullet hole) but no requirement for where the cylinder ends up after getting shot......in one such case the "marksman" actually hit the valve instead of the tank. Never did find the valve. Most of the cylinders used are a kevlar reinforced aluminum cylinder. Recently they switched to carbon fiber reinforced aluminum cylinders to reduce weight. Only the general aviation rafts still use the old metal cylinders.
It's pretty amazing to see the upper deck slide on a 747 inflate in six seconds......it uses two 1100 cubic inch cylinders using a Nitrogen/CO2 mixture at 3000 psi to run four turbofan aspirators. way cool.
Gary