To be fair, the expected failure mode of unrecoverable memory corruption in kernel space should probably be a panic followed by a reboot. Unfortunately, as you

To be fair, the expected failure mode of unrecoverable memory corruption in kernel space should probably be a panic followed by a reboot. Unfortunately, as you said, if you manage to corrupt more than two bits in a row it's a crapshoot if ECC DRAM will even detect the corruption or not.