There is plenty you can do in safe code that will get you into just as much trouble. Reflection.Emit, for example, can cause all sorts of mayhem without a single unsafe tag, but I digress. I fully understand why Microsoft felt the need to call extra attention to these language constructs, but they could have chosen more emotionally neutral terms. That's my only point. You say people are not very good at writing code, and that is true. They are much worse at handling their emotions, and unsafe is an emotionally loaded term. Many people hear/read that, not really understanding what it does and does not actually imply, and dismiss it as something that's never allowed because "unsafe" means "bad" in their world.