Yes, one can quite simply nuke the root partition, reinstall the system on it, and if they choose the same location for the user home, they'll also find the old

Yes, one can quite simply nuke the root partition, reinstall the system on it, and if they choose the same location for the user home, they'll also find the old user configurations ready. User configurations are only half of the total (with the method above, the system configurations are lost), however, it's considerably less work to do. This doesn't only apply to system corruption scenarios - upgrades also can use the same workflow (of course, the compatibility of the configuration files with new package versions is a separate matter).