The issue is that a single V8 thread in Node.js could be handling the event loop for thousands of clients. A process crash here could cause a mini thundering-herd when all the users attempt to reconnect at the same time.

So his question is not baseless - the solution is to have a VM that rarely crashes.

n.b. Erlang also hard-crashes when it can't allocate memory. This hasn't hurt its reputation for reliability.