diff --git a/Michelf/Markdown.php b/Michelf/Markdown.php
index 746a2d04..793451ab 100644
--- a/Michelf/Markdown.php
+++ b/Michelf/Markdown.php
@@ -374,7 +374,7 @@ protected function hashHTMLBlocks($text) {
 					  </\2\s*>	# closing nested tag
 					)
 				  |
-					<(?!/\2\s*>	# other tags with a different name
+					<(?!/?\2[\s/>])(?!/\2\s*>	# other tags (not an open/close of \2)
 				  )
 				)*',
 				$nested_tags_level);
diff --git a/test/unit/MarkdownHtmlBlockTest.php b/test/unit/MarkdownHtmlBlockTest.php
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..2f27d853
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/unit/MarkdownHtmlBlockTest.php
@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
+<?php
+
+class MarkdownHtmlBlockTest extends \PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase
+{
+	/**
+	 * Inputs made of many unclosed block-level HTML tags, each alone on its
+	 * line. The HTML-block regex used to explore an exponential number of ways
+	 * to pair these up, so a few hundred bytes either exhausted
+	 * pcre.backtrack_limit (wiping the whole document to an empty string) or,
+	 * with the limit raised, took time doubling about every 8 tags.
+	 */
+	public function unclosedBlocks(): array
+	{
+		return array(
+			'div, blank lines' => array(str_repeat("<div>\n\n", 2000)),
+			'div, single lines' => array(str_repeat("<div>\n", 2000)),
+			'ins (group a)' => array(str_repeat("<ins>\n\n", 2000)),
+			'del (group a)' => array(str_repeat("<del>\n", 2000)),
+			'section' => array(str_repeat("<section>\n\n", 2000)),
+			'attr with > in quotes' => array(str_repeat("<div class=\"a>b\">\n\n", 2000)),
+		);
+	}
+
+	/**
+	 * @dataProvider unclosedBlocks
+	 */
+	public function testUnclosedBlocksDoNotWipeOutput(string $prefix)
+	{
+		$html = (new \Michelf\Markdown())->transform($prefix . "the trailing paragraph\n");
+		// Before the fix this came back as "" under the default backtrack
+		// limit, or took seconds to minutes with the limit raised.
+		$this->assertStringContainsString('the trailing paragraph', $html);
+	}
+
+	/**
+	 * A realistic document whose real content surrounds a run of stray
+	 * block-level tags must not be lost. Before the fix the unclosed tags
+	 * blew the backtrack limit and the whole document came back empty,
+	 * taking the heading and both paragraphs with it.
+	 */
+	public function testSurroundingContentSurvivesStrayTagRun()
+	{
+		$markdown =
+			"# My Page\n\n" .
+			"Intro paragraph.\n\n" .
+			str_repeat("<section>\n", 60) .
+			"\nConclusion paragraph.\n";
+
+		$html = (new \Michelf\Markdown())->transform($markdown);
+
+		$this->assertStringContainsString('My Page', $html);
+		$this->assertStringContainsString('Intro paragraph.', $html);
+		$this->assertStringContainsString('Conclusion paragraph.', $html);
+	}
+
+	/**
+	 * The CPU-denial-of-service variant: with the backtrack limit raised (as
+	 * the Readme suggests when output comes back empty) the old regex instead
+	 * ran in time doubling roughly every dozen-and-a-half tags. Here a large
+	 * unclosed run must parse quickly and keep its trailing content.
+	 */
+	public function testLargeUnclosedRunIsNotCatastrophic()
+	{
+		$markdown = str_repeat("<div>\n\n", 5000) . "the trailing paragraph\n";
+
+		$start = microtime(true);
+		$html = (new \Michelf\Markdown())->transform($markdown);
+		$elapsed = microtime(true) - $start;
+
+		$this->assertStringContainsString('the trailing paragraph', $html);
+		// Linear now: ~0.05s in practice. A generous bound still fails hard
+		// against the old exponential behaviour.
+		$this->assertLessThan(10.0, $elapsed, 'HTML block parsing should be linear');
+	}
+
+	/**
+	 * Well-formed nested block tags (up to the parser's supported depth) must
+	 * still be recognised as a single HTML block and passed through verbatim.
+	 */
+	public function testWellFormedNestedBlocksAreUnchanged()
+	{
+		$html = "<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\nhello\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>";
+
+		$result = (new \Michelf\Markdown())->transform($html);
+
+		// The whole block is emitted as-is, not wrapped in <p> and not escaped.
+		$this->assertStringContainsString("<div>\nhello\n</div>", $result);
+		$this->assertStringNotContainsString('<p>', $result);
+		$this->assertStringNotContainsString('&lt;', $result);
+	}
+
+	public function tooDeeplyNested(): array
+	{
+		$cases = array();
+		foreach (array(5, 6, 8) as $depth) {
+			$cases["depth $depth"] = array(
+				str_repeat("<div>\n", $depth) . "hello\n" . str_repeat("</div>\n", $depth),
+			);
+		}
+		return $cases;
+	}
+
+	/**
+	 * Nesting deeper than the parser's hard limit (nested_tags_level = 4) was
+	 * never supported and still produces malformed HTML either way. What must
+	 * hold is that it never triggers the catastrophic empty-string wipe: the
+	 * inner content always survives.
+	 *
+	 * @dataProvider tooDeeplyNested
+	 */
+	public function testNestingBeyondSupportedDepthKeepsContent(string $markdown)
+	{
+		$html = (new \Michelf\Markdown())->transform($markdown);
+
+		$this->assertNotSame('', trim($html));
+		$this->assertStringContainsString('hello', $html);
+	}
+}