This is not normal behavior, and hence is not a realistic scenario. Nevertheless, the cause of the original issue may have something to do with how Netlify manages its cache control. The cause of the force-refreshing issue is certainly this.
Most sites cache aggressively - Cloudflare, Vercel etc. Eg look at the cache control header on any static resource from Vercel:
cache-control: public,max-age=31536000,immutable
So when you reload the site, it will serve from local cache. You can reload once or a 100 times - no difference.
Netlify wants to revalidate each and every resource, each time on site load and reload. I’ve pointed this out earlier as well that its rubbish.
cache-control: public, max-age=0, must-revalidate
So I believe that when a flood of traffic hits Netlify servers, and its not a busy site, their servers cant keep up.
Here’s my post (Very) slow loading of some js: TTBF / download / revalidation, point 3
and
PS: Netlify folks can correct me if I’m wrong.