This isn't happening in my case, David, but it does happen after a crash.
About 1 or 2 years ago my system started crashing, usually once or twice a day. This has never been more than a minor annoyance for me since I save with fanatical frequency, never lose more than one minute of work. When the Mac reboots I get the alert asking if I want to opt to resume using the AUTO-SAVED feature. I never do, opting to resume from my most recent manual save.
I've never performed any destructive editing while outside the project.
Thanks for all the ideas, though. It's only been a big deal once, but that was a doozy; I was met with a dozen tracks of backing vocals, each one shifted out of sync by a different amount. ‼️😬‼️