--- On Mon, 12/26/11, Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org> wrote:

A question though: what command would "bring the system down"?

Well, if you are logged in as root the possibilities are almost endless, the classic one being:

# rm -rf *

run from the root directory. Strictly speaking, of course, that doesn't "bring the system down" but there really isn't much that you can do with the system after running it ...