[junke]

The behavior is different if a panic occurs, isn't it? But is there any chance that this particular initialization code might panic in the first place?

[schmichael]

Given the current code and no races against the values being initialized: no, there is no chance for a panic.

[alpb]

This is not a good assumption. The code will panic, for instance when it can't allocate memory, or runs into signal handling issues.