# How to kill an unresponsive SSH session

## Summary

Lets say you're happily typing in your remote shell when all of sudden, the crappy Wi-Fi network you're using goes down.
You end up with a perfectly unusable frozen shell, ugh!

To do that, assuming you lost connectivity, press in that order:

```shell
[Enter]
~
.
```

That is, **return** key then **tilde** then **period**.

This will send an escape sequence to your local SSH client and terminate the connection.
So this will always work even without a network connection.

Here's the list of escape sequences:

Supported escape sequences:

`~.`  - terminate connection (and any multiplexed sessions)
`~B`  - send a BREAK to the remote system
`~C`  - open a command line
`~R`  - Request rekey (SSH protocol 2 only)
`~^Z` - suspend ssh
`~#`  - list forwarded connections
`~&`  - background ssh (when waiting for connections to terminate)
`~?`  - this message
`~~`  - send the escape character by typing it twice


(Note that escapes are only recognized immediately after newline.)