In addition to others here posting relevant documentation, let me point out one more thing. Those two words "hard reset" standing together (even on their own) s

In addition to others here posting relevant documentation, let me point out one more thing. Those two words "hard reset" standing together (even on their own) should bring up a mental image of alarm bells and red flashing lights. As if a "reset" wasn't bad enough, they're giving you an extra dangerous option to go with it, "I want it hard". Git is an insanely powerful software, but that power doesn't come free. After all those years, I still take a backup of my local repo before I start attempting some avant-garde dark art sorcery on the repo: "cp -R stuff /tmp/" and I can safely dip myself in binary ink and light the magic smoke incense knowing that I always have a way out.