You don’t sound combative at all. As others pointed out - the main issues with the 401k is liquidity and taxes. If your going to rely on that as emergency funds you’d want to make sure you had an open line of credit with a sufficient credit limit to dip into while you’re in the emergency room, mechanics shop, etc. You’d want to make sure that you had enough lead time on the payment of that debt to get to the 401k funds, and understand the tax implications.

A final thought here - there’s a temptation to see “emergency” savings as something you _might_ use, but I think for most folks (especially those with families) emergency funds are something they WILL use at some point (life happens, and it’s expensive) - so they need to be saving in addition to retirement planning. If your retirement plan explicitly includes the notion of looting the 401k at some point, then that might work for you - but for most people viewing a retirement account as emergency savings is dangerous because it leaves them under saving for inevitable bumps in the road.