No, eventually they would figure out how to rewrite it if they can't get it working again. But I could definitely see a multi-week outage.
This thread is just an hour old btw, not sure when the issue started.
Seems like a huge reaction from HN for an hour long downtime given that Twitter has gone down for longer in the past.
I personally don't think that 100% uptime for everyone around the globe is even a worthwhile goal for Twitter. The incremental costs for that last 0.5% aren't worth the incremental benefits.
HA is most necessary for what, journalists? (Who are already antagonized under Musk)
Everyone else can wait the hour.