This is what killed the Chinese trader Hui You who didn't control his emotions while betting on leverage and a single mistake resulted into losing 2000 BTC. It was actually an example that the bigger the whale you are, the higher the chances of getting crushed down by the biggest sharks out there waiting for the best moment, while watching out the money that enters the markets in pieces. Even when you see that there are 1/2 or 1/3 of shorts over longs, or vice versa, stay away from the markets or play with least capital and leverage against the side that's looking to manipulate because then, these sharks come and drag the markets against high orders to liquidate them and steal away their money "legally".
To add, BitMEX has quite a bad reputation when it comes to liquidating their own traders. I'm not sure to what degree they actually do this, but after them admitting to trade against their users in a "fair" manner, anything is possible.
This shows that you don't only have to take into consideration the risks of the sharks you are referring to, but also the exchange if the odds are stacked against them and see no choice but to mass liquidate shorts or longs.
The severity of everything shady that plays out on BitMEX isn't seen on any other derivative platform. The very fact they don't do anything about the overload error just shows that they are happily leveraging an easy to solve error as an excuse.