Nuclear Option

Noun · Hacker Culture

Definitions

  1. The most extreme available action to resolve a problem, such as deleting and rebuilding, forcing a failover, or shutting down a system entirely. In engineering conversations it implies a powerful fix with major side effects or irreversible consequences.

    In plain English: The most drastic possible action to solve a problem.

    Example: "If the migration metadata stays corrupted, the nuclear option is rebuilding the cluster from snapshots."

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