It's like every week someone is shocked to discover that the 4% rule isn't infallible.
I'm absolutely fascinated by this.
No WR is safe no matter what mathematical model you use.
You can't Boglehead your way to total financial security.
The models are a best guess at how to make decisions today to anticipate the financial needs of tomorrow and to assess the possible risk mitigating effects of different options.
It's all just probabilities and not dissimilar to the weather forecast. The calculations behind it are solid and the best we've got for deciding whether or not to bring an umbrella.
Though, that decision will depend far more on the individual's willingness to risk getting wet.
Is it wise to retire on exactly 25X your base expenses and to spend every single cent of your budget every single year, plus inflation, while blindly ignoring what the markets and global economy are doing, while keeping no doors open for future earnings if necessary???
Lol, probably not.
What these models do is allow us to decide today what mitigating strategies we think best fit our particular risk tolerances for what might happen tomorrow.
For one person, ageism might be a huge factor in their industry, so banking on going back to their career is a bad mitigating strategy. They may choose to be more conservative, or they may choose to build skills that aren't subject to ageism, or both.
For another, they might have citizenship and family in an extremely low cost geographic region and can easily geo-arbitrage their way to a much lower spend rate.
For yet another, they might not have a lot of flexibility and may have a lot of high fixed costs, say, for a medically complex child whose specialists are only in HCOL areas of a country with expensive healthcare. Their best bet may be an extremely low WR and a large cash reserve.
For someone whose stache is primarily in index funds, AA based strategies might be best for mitigating risks like SORR. For someone with a rock solid defined benefit pension that covers their entire bare bones spend, a bond tent or cash reserves might be overkill.
For someone whose stache is primarily in real estate...well, I have no idea what they might do since I don't read much about primarily RE strategies. But you get the point.
All plans can fail.
The best thing you can do is try to understand your possible and probable failures, know your particular risk factors, and modulate accordingly.
The 4% rule is a starting point, not an end goal.
If you just got a perm and wear a lot of silk, grab an umbrella. Me? I don't mind getting rained on and I don't worry about the 4% rule. YMMV