Ed Nielsen wrote:
At a trade show several years ago, a vendor demonstrated the effects
stapling cables could have on signal transmission. He took a VCR, a ch.
3 modulator and a piece of drop cable and attached the cable to a piece
of wood utilizing a regular staple gun that you buy at any home
improvement store. Used the gun as most people would, and inspection of
the cable showed it to be fine (undamaged). By the seventeenth staple,
ch. 3 was completely gone..

It doesn't take major crushing to create mismatch, and as to whether it
is significant sort of depends on what happens to be trying to get
through at the particular point where the mismatch occurs.

A periodically repeating mismatch, such as the one produced by the
staple demonstration, can cause extreme effects as the demonstration
showed. This is a very much worse case than a single mismatch.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL