While I do keep saving my project regularly, it happened to me a few times that I baked several layered modifiers (one by one, so my PC would handle it) and afterwards saved it. Then accidentally rewrote that very baked data with something else or just deleted accidentally wrong folder and when reopening mentioned file, Blender tried to recalculated everything from scratch, never finishing, because it’s too much to handle all at once. Appending the object with stacked modifiers will transport it with all modifiers active already, causing the same problem.
The prevention is my best friend, and ideal is to either be very mindful when managing folders and/or keep saving with modifiers disabled, but when this happens, is there a way to somehow disable those modifiers to prevent Blender file from trying to crunch everything right during the start up?
Since computing any simulation is the wanted behaviour for any non-correctly cached sim i guess disableing any to-be-baked modifer before save or directly after load is the only way to prevent blender to start any computation.
So you are somekind of in-charge to do the right thing before blender does this “mega-computation” your machine is not capable of but you had loaded it with.
Video for ilustration only and not making any assumptions about the actual problem :
You’re right, it’s all my responsibility first and foremost not to F up my files. I was just curious about other possibilities. Sometimes, when doing stuff I “shouldn’t” with Blender, I come across some interesting discoveries that come handy later.
Hey, I can do stuff people normally use workstations with Tb of RAM and <50 core CPUs. I just need to be smart about partitioning the workload, that’s all. Blender keeps amazing me over and over again with the possibilities!
I wish I could shove in 1Tb of RAM, that would be fun… (Gotta work with 192Gb “only”)
That’s sometimes the blessing with computers. You can try things whatfor your system is not really approriate for. And if you like it then it’s a curse.
( 192GB !? … i wish i had 32GB… or at least 24GB… so stop complaining )
It’s a curse in my case. But luckily for me, it’s one of those few things that keeps me excited every morning. To keep pushing boundaries of what I’m capable of doing in Blender. 5 years back, I had no clue what vertices are. Now I’m stealing ideas and workflows from guys and girls from Ubisoft, DICE and so on (public GDC presentations).
I tried to build “budget high end” PC for Blender modelling mainly, while still in consumer price range. 7950x, 192Gb (256Gb theoretically possible, but couldn’t find any working examples) DDR5 + decent GPU, SSD etc. Overall package fit in $3000 budget. And all still works with my old 750w PSU under full load. So, yeah, “cheap” for what it can do, I think!
Before anyone asks, yes, I’m using all that RAM very regularly and loving it! Blender 3 was great, but 4+ is fantastic!
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And if you like it then it’s a curse. 
so stop complaining