Of course nothing is riskless, but it's pretty close if done properly. Plowing all of your retirement savings into the stock of your employer is something that anyone who spends ten minutes Googling "how to manage my money" knows is retarded.

I'm sure it's possible to instead put your 401k and IRA money into a diversified collection of ETFs and bonds and such and still end up broke, but it hasn't happened yet, and if it does, our entire country is in a very bad place.