There are many ways to rescue a system nowadays.

In the beginning, boot or rescue floppies were used. You can still make them.

In debian (and debian-clones?), try 'man mkboot'. Fedora has 'mkbootdisk'.

Try this http://www.linuxlots.com/~fawcett/Bootdisk-HOWTO/

You can always boot from a Live CD to fix stuff.

You can try info grub. The installation section has a complete set of instructions for creating a boot floppy.

And there are also rescue CDs. Try http://www.sysresccd.org/.

It is also a good idea to keep a copy of the MBR (Master Boot Record) if you work with multiple distributions/OSes on your computer.

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