It does fail... on my machine at least. The thing is that the Runnable swallows the exception. Try instead:
executor.submit(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
for (int i = 0; i < NUM_OF_INV; i++) {
try {
bc.somethingElse();
} catch (NullPointerException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
});
I get NPE's every time I run it.