What if console locked

An incident happened yesterday that got me to thinking.  I slept on it and
still don't have an answer, but it seems like it should be simple.

What happened is, during the 4am backup, run at the console from BRMS
console, the system did not recognize the tape that was in the drive.  It
had it as "SLT001" for I don't yet know what reason.  When I came in the
system was stalled at that point.  QCTL was up and QINTER was down, which I
expected.

But the BRMS console would not allow the Sys Req key.  Did nothing.  I have
1 twinax display left, which I went to and did an ENDJOB *IMMED on the BRMS
console.  It did not take, so I had to wait 10 minutes and do ENDJOBABN.

During those 10 minutes I dinked around in iSeries access, creating a
session called DSPJC.  (In my shop all sessions that start with DSP* go to
QCTL.)  From there I could have ended the console also.

Then it dawned on me what if this happened when:

1) TCP/IP wasn't up (therefore no iSeries access)
2) The console was locked and would not allow Sys Req
3) My last remaining twinax display (a 3180) had bit the dust

How would I have gotten in to the system to do anything?  BTW, I have ops
console direct attached.

What seems like the problem to me is the console not allowing Sys Req.

It seems like I'm missing something here . . .