Tthe single-use power hammer actually sort of happened once in real-life -- at least once, that I know of -- it was on an episode of "Curious and Unusual Deaths". A man from Malta managed to find a butterfly bomb (he obviously didn't know what it was), and amazingly survived handling it (corrosion), but he ended up welding it into a mallet/hammer and used it to put in a fence.
Completely unaware of what he was handling he hammered away and BOOM.