I accidentally untarred archive intended to be extracted in root directory, which among others included some files for /etc directory.
I went on to rm -rv ~/etc, but I quickly typed rm -rv /etc instead, and hit enter, while using a root account.
they acquired a tar package from somewhere else. the instructions said to extract it to the root directory (because of its file structure). they accidentally extracted it to their home dir
that is how this happened. not anything like what you were saying