I am using a SynchronisedQueue to communicate between threads. I found that destroying the thread object when the attaching thread is waiting on a condition var
From the C++11 spec:
30.3.1.3 thread destructor [thread.thread.destr] ~thread();
If joinable(), calls std::terminate(). Otherwise, has no effects.
[ Note: Either implicitly detaching or joining a joinable() thread in its destructor could result in difficult to debug correctness (for detach) or performance (for join) bugs encountered only when an exception is raised. Thus the pro grammer must ensure that the destructor is never executed while the thread is still joinable. — end note ]
So calling a thread destructor without first calling join (to wait for it to finish) or detach is guarenteed to immediately call std::terminate and end the program.