A Near Miss

Nobody like dying in Nethack.  It may be funny.  It may make a good story.  In the end, it's the end of a game.  That game should never end from network failure.

So there I am in the bottom level of the Gnomish Mines looking for potions of gain energy so I can change my 11 diluted potions of extra healing into 11 diluted potions of gain level and add 88 hp to my meager 130 hp total.

Suddenly, the game is not responding to my keyboard input.  Uh oh.  I try everything I can think of short of closing the terminal session.  Finally, I decide to log into nethack.alt.org from another terminal and see if I can recover my game that way.

Ahh!  A countdown timer!!  Should I let it go?!  Should I abort it!!?!!?  I decided to snap a screenshot and let it continue.

Even worse!!  Non-graceful termination of a process on a Unix system!!  This is it.  Game over, man.

Wait.... that looks like..... could it be?

I'm back, baby!