Question: If you are root, and you issue 

```
rm -rf / 

```

Then how far can the command go? Can you recover data from this kind of an action? Even after the binaries are gone, would the running processes still be active? What would it take to make the same physical machine boot again? What files would you need to restore to make this happen?

I could try this on a VM and see, but I want to know the rationale behind what to expect if I do this.

Answer: 
As some people said, you can still use `sudo rm -rf /*` to remove anything. Without the asterisk works on the OS X too. Someone has made a footage on destroying OS X Yosemite like this, and I am sure that Linux based OS will experience much the same.

Things slowly begin getting irresponsive. I don't think that everything got deleted, as the terminal froze while the process was happening, but it was enough to freeze the whole thing and do a force restart.

Attempting to reboot causes a single-user mode like boot screen with errors.
One can't simply destroy his/her system by issuing `rm -rf /` as root. Initially, the command will be issued under fail-safe mode, which will restrict the usage of `rm` on `/` but even with `--no-preserve-root` as an argument, the running system will not permit the removal of running processes from the disk; however, the rest of the programs and files will be removed, leaving an unusable system with (almost) no programs to run! Please check the screenshots tarred here, the command was issued in Arch Linux in Virtual Box: <http://bit.ly/q9CsA4>