cuddles. do you have more than one computer?
i have "saved" many a session with the help of ssh.
i am sitting there doing some near idiotic things with my system (like making some stupid binary driver work) suddenly the LED's on the keyboarf are all ligthing my face and nothing responds. i turn in my seat and use my trusted old laptop to ssh to my computer and with help of
ps -aux
kill -9 pid
and friends i get a working system. perhaps a zombie or so but...