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Anti-nuke

A Discord anti-nuke bot that puts your server back

By ESN Systems, makers of ESN Guardian. Updated November 2, 2026.

ESN Guardian watches every destructive action in your server. When an account or a bot starts deleting channels, wiping roles, mass-banning members or spinning up spam webhooks, Guardian stops it, strips its power and restores what was changed. Here is how it works and how to set it up properly.

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How a nuke happens

Nukes almost never come from a stranger. They come from inside the permission list: a staff member who turns, a staff account that gets phished, or a bot whose token leaks. Once that account has Manage Channels, Manage Roles or Administrator, it can delete everything in seconds, far faster than a human moderator can react. That speed is why anti-nuke has to be automatic.

What Guardian's anti-nuke watches

Guardian tracks how many destructive actions each account and bot makes in a short window, and acts the moment a limit is crossed. It covers:

• channel, role and emoji deletes
• mass bans, kicks and timeouts, and mass unbans
• webhook creation (the main spam tool in a nuke)
• new bots being added
• dangerous permissions added to @everyone, and bot roles that suddenly gain Administrator
• threads, invites and scheduled events being wiped

When a limit trips, Guardian removes the attacker's dangerous roles, stops the action and posts a clear log entry with who did what and why it acted.

Undo, not just stop

Stopping an attacker after a few seconds still leaves damage. Guardian keeps snapshots of your server's structure, so /rewind and the one-click undo on the log entry recreate deleted channels and roles with their permissions. /snapshot diff shows what changed since the last snapshot, and /antinuke timemachine shows an attacker's last 10 minutes so you can undo one action or all of them.

Hijacked bots

A bot you trust can still be turned against you if its token leaks. Guardian's Sentry learns how each bot normally behaves, and steps in when one suddenly floods channels, pings everyone or makes bulk changes, even if that bot is trusted. /botguard power lists which bots hold dangerous permissions so you can trim them.

Trust without a blank cheque

Your owner and trusted staff are never punished by automatic protection. For everyone else, /whitelist grant gives trust that expires on its own: a mod can get ban rights for two hours to clean up a raid, then it ends automatically, with every grant recorded in an audit log.

Set it up in five minutes

1. Add Guardian and keep every permission ticked.
2. Move its role up. Server Settings → Roles, drag ESN GUARDIAN above every role it should protect. This is the step most people miss: a bot cannot act on a role above its own.
3. Run /guardian setup and pick a preset. It turns on anti-nuke and makes a log channel.
4. Trust your staff with /antinuke trust, and check /antinuke health to see that it is all switched on.
5. Check the grade with /audit report. It flags the server settings that weaken anti-nuke, such as too many Administrators or moderators without 2FA.
6. Run a drill. /hardening drill tests your setup safely so you know it works before a real attack.

When it gets a call wrong

Every security bot eventually flags something legitimate, like a staff member reorganising channels. Guardian's /casework undo and /settings rollback reverse its own actions in one step, and many protections can run in alert-only mode while you tune limits.

Lock it down in an emergency

Sometimes you want everything frozen while you work out what happened. /safemode lockdown applies a lockdown preset in one command (invites only, read-only, staff-only or full), and a panic PIN lets a trusted staff member trigger it fast. /safemode unlock lifts it when you are ready. Guardian's Watchtower also keeps an eye on invites, webhooks, newly added bots, scheduled events and mass thread creation, with clear alerts in your log channel, so you often see trouble building before it becomes a nuke.

Anti-nuke is not a replacement for good permissions

No bot can stop the server owner, and every bot is limited by its own role position. Keep Administrator to as few accounts as possible, turn on Discord's "Require 2FA for moderator actions", and limit Manage Webhooks to one or two roles. Our guide on how to protect a Discord server from nukes covers each of these in detail.

How it compares

Here is how Guardian's anti-nuke and related features compare with other popular bots, from their public pages.

Swipe the table sideways to see every bot →

✓ = listed · 💎 = paid tier only · — = not listed on their public pages. Checked Nov 2, 2026. Wick: Wick docs and Wick Premium ⁴ (anti-raid and backups are listed as Premium). RaidProtect: raidprotect.bot and docs. Dyno: FAQ ² (points to its Automod module for anti-nuke/anti-raid) and Premium ³ (billed $49.99/year). NightWatch and Strafe have no public website or docs, so their columns come from their public Discord bot profiles, NightWatch's slash-command list and the log posts each bot made while it ran in our own server. Features change on every bot, so test on a spare server before you switch.

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