Sure, but can you get 1,000 of them to explode simultaneously that way? You'd think there'd be some variation in the time of explosion, at least by tens of minutes or hours, maybe even by days.
A puncture causes runaway/explosion in seconds. Overcharging takes 13 minutes. There's not good data on a dead short (because it's unlikely during normal operation), but it's going to be between those on the faster end. From personal experience a shorts cause things to get noticeably hot after about 10 seconds, the graphs show that once you hit 60C things rapidly get worse.
A relay may have been required to hold the short as the battery stops supplying voltage.
