Alien Isolation - Nightmare - gas containers can save ammo and items

The pistol becomes a very weak weapon on Nightmare mode, but if used to blow up gas containers it can scare off the alien even before you could ever craft a molotov or get the flamethrower; and for androids it causes a lot of damage, as you can see I only needed one shotgun shot to bring him down, otherwise it would have required 3 or 4 shots to the head.
Pistol is also great vs face huggers.