Prod Destruction 201 — How to Torch Prod w/ Surgical Precision

First, let’s revisit one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal: feature flags. They’re designed to protect production, but in the hands of a true professional, they become ticking time bombs. The trick is to create a flag that looks safe—something innocent like newCheckoutFlowV2_enabled. Flip it on in prod without testing, tie it to a half-migrated data model, and watch as payment flows dissolve into confusion. Extra credit if the flag toggles automatically based on some obscure user metadata that no one tracks.

Next up: distributed system meltdown via cascading failures. This one’s an advanced move, but oh, the beauty when it hits. Start by “optimizing” a shared library used across services. Maybe add a subtle infinite loop, or a retry-on-failure logic that ignores exponential backoff. Once deployed, sit back and sip your coffee as containers start domino-ing into oblivion. Bonus: the incident report will include the word "thundering herd", which is basically the chef’s kiss of production chaos.