[akavel]

There's a huge difference in the outcomes those can lead to, that's why it's not just a simple "laundering", but a serious gain. On top of that, C vs. Zig vs. Rust give you a different level of that gain still.

The particular difference is noted in the fragment you quoted. What may not be obvious, is why corrupted memory etc. are a much bigger problem than panics. In fact it is usually the _lack_ of panics that is problem in them: they will lead to silent memory corruption. This will lead to unexpected behaviors of your code. Ones you just never even assumed possible - due to basic contracts being broken. Such problems with then silently propagate through your system, poisoning it without you knowing. Whereas a panic is a clear cut alarm/canary behavior: something's wrong, let's crash loudly and make it immediately visible. This will protect against the corruption spreading out. And in a typical system, will restart the panicked binary, allowing the system to resume operation with minimal disruption.