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Let's watch the floppy boot. Notice the "Loading linux" and "Loading filesys" messages. I'm using a "Bochs" virtual machine here so I can capture the boot sequence. You can see how SysLinux handles "init" and the RAMDISK. When you see the "Please press enter to activate this console" prompt, I did. That's how I got the "~ #" root prompt. But look before that. See the "Welcome to Linux!" message? That's from the "rcS" script. See how it ran before we even got a login prompt?

After I type my first "ls" command, you'll see all the folders I created as well as a link from linuxrc to /bin/busybox. We don't need an linuxrc file because BusyBox handles it all. Of course, you could always replace this link with a real linuxrc startup script.

When I run the ls command on the /bin folder, you might be quick enough to see there is only one real file in there - busybox. Everything else is a link to busybox.

When I run my final "poweroff" command, you have to realize that it's actually BusyBox doing all the poweroff magic. I'm not sure about the final "init" kernel panic after power off. Maybe its because there really is no init program. It's really BusyBox masquerading as init. And when busybox decides to terminate after the power off message, the kernel decides it isn't happy.