I did that once ("rm -rvf *"), deliberately, on an SGI workstation that was
(1) disconnected from our LAN and
(2) being decommissioned
It stayed "up" for several minutes before some critical files got deleted (things in "/dev", IIRC) and the display went blank. Continued to chatter the disk for several more minutes before it totally quit doing anything.
I felt like Dave Bowman ...
In Unix, before they die good parents will kill all their children before they become zombies.