Even though this isn't dull I'll allow it because you're reporting a near miss, which is an important part of safety.

Well that doesn’t sound dull at all.

Pressure cookers have been blowing up for decades.

When the safety valve did nothing the thing to do was unplug it. My lab uses these pots as autoclaves for the last 6 years with no issues at all 2-3x a day.

Just 1st degree burns ... a little tender but not bad.

It sounds like even though you're using a pressure cooker you still didn't go long enough.

Glad you knky ended up with minor burns, boiling water is scary stuff! Getting rid of the thing is probably the right call, I'm sure you can work around not having it.

My mother's story of my great grandmother making split pea soup in a pressure cooker only for it to explode and take off the entire hood range means I avoid pressure everything for my entire life.

She now regrets that story cause it means I only do water bath canning and not pressure canning lol

Americans and their copay. :)

I don't exactly understand what went wrong here, and now I'm scared of this happening to me some day.

How was the pressure valve not releasing pressure in either position if the pot was pressurized?
What is a lock-plunger? My Instant Pot's locking mechanism is a physical barrier that prevents the lid from lifting upwards once you rotate the lid 45 degrees clockwise. If you don't engage this locking position the electronics will complain and refuse to start heating.

I'm guessing the pressure release valve must have been clogged (overfilled with soup?), but how was OP able to turn the lid at all while under pressure? It must have taken a lot of strength, unless the there was also an imperfect seal around the lid's gasket, in which case, oof.

Either way, glad there were no serious injuries.

Anytime an electric pressure cooker is not performing properly unplug it and leave the room until it has cooled down completely.

This is a user issue, not a failure of the pressure cooker.

Yeah I basically just use mine as a slow cooker and yogurt maker. Probably would have been better for me** to just get a dirt cheap crockpot that could be put on a dimmer.

EDIT: clarified that I wasn't telling OP what they should have done, I was saying what I probably should have done instead of getting an instapot.

Based on some of the comments and responses, it sounds like my Instantpot is around the same age. Presumably yours is a similar design/style.

For this to have happened assuming we're using similar models, it means that there were multiple simultaneous failures on the safety mechanisms and at least 1 if not 2 points of human failure. Basically, you won the reverse lottery and that sucks. There's basically no way I could reproduce this on my machine without going to extraordinary lengths like using super glue and who knows what else.

At least you were relatively lucky in the sense that this could have been a much worse disaster and by American healthcare standards, this was on the low end of expensive.

Glad you're ok!!

I've got a newer instapot and it has a switch at the top the vents extremely well.

I'd vent and relock it in that situation.

If the vent didn't work I'd unplug it and leave it alone for the rest of the day out of paranoia. Too scared of this happening.

Was licking your wounds painful, delicious, or both?

this is my nightmare. also looks like a design problem did they not compensate you?

My dad worked for a company that made beef flavors and a reactor blew up and took out a 20-foot cinderblock wall. The reactor in this story is a very large pressure cooker and the cause of the explosion was a clogged pressure valve. The guy in the room was okay all things considered. Safety gear kept him safe. The whole place smelled like exploded meat for a long time.

Anyways glad you're OK and I hope that soup smelled good enough to paint your walls with.