The key to Erlang error handling is that crashes should bubble up to a high level which then restarts everything below it in a known good state. If you're in a

The key to Erlang error handling is that crashes should bubble up to a high level which then restarts everything below it in a known good state. If you're in a coordinated dance with another process you link to that process. If a process you're linked to crashes then you crash too. There's no way to block yourself in Erlang such that you can't be told to crash. After you crash your supervisor might restart you, if that's what you configured. Or you might give up on your specific task.