Same way everyone else manages it, including myself: abject ignorance. You and I (as a now more experienced git user) know that it is extremely unlikely to actually be in a state where blowing away the repository is necessary. Like you, I can’t think of how one would pull that off. That’s why I tell less experienced users “if you’ve committed, even just locally, you can’t lose your work without really trying. If you get in trouble, don’t use the ‘-f’ switch, and come get me, we’ll get it sorted out.

But that was not me nine years ago as I blew away the repository again because I got in a confused state (me, not git). And be honest, that was you nine years ago, too, before you wrapped your head around git.