The Debian init system general resolution returns

Also, systemd intercept its own crash in order to prevent kernel panic. While that doesn't mean it will work fully ( likely far from it ), it doesn't take down the kernel and userspace while doing so, so the argument of "it will crash the kernel" is incorrect.

See https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/master/src/core/m...

and the freeze() call, and the signal handler calling this function just after it.