Hadrons emerging from high-energy collisions, as it is the case for protons and pions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, can produce a damage to inorganic crystals that is specific and cumulative. The mechanism is well understood as due to bulk damage from fragments caused by fission. In this paper, the existing experimental evidence for lead tungstate, LYSO and cerium fluoride is summarised, a study using FLUKA simulations is described and its results are discussed and compared to measurements. The outcome corroborates the confidence in the predictive power of such simulations applied to inorganic scintillators, which are relevant to their adoption as scintillators for calorimetry.