$ uname -a
Linux xxxxxxxx 3.16.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt2-1~bpo70+1 (2014-12-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ go version
go version go1.4.1 linux/amd64
$ dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1M count=10 of=crash.data
$ go build crash.go && ./crash
panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference [recovered]
        panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
[signal 0xb code=0x1 addr=0x18 pc=0x44b648]

goroutine 1 [running]:
encoding/gob.catchError(0xc20807a070)
        /usr/local/go/src/encoding/gob/error.go:38 +0x96
encoding/gob.(*Decoder).decodeValue(0xc20807a000, 0xc200000000, 0x691240, 0xc2080837a0, 0xd9)
        /usr/local/go/src/encoding/gob/decode.go:1159 +0x258
encoding/gob.(*Decoder).DecodeValue(0xc20807a000, 0x600da0, 0xc2080837a0, 0x16, 0x0, 0x0)
        /usr/local/go/src/encoding/gob/decoder.go:210 +0x1d9
encoding/gob.(*Decoder).Decode(0xc20807a000, 0x600da0, 0xc2080837a0, 0x0, 0x0)
        /usr/local/go/src/encoding/gob/decoder.go:185 +0x297
main.main()
        /xxx/var/log/merged/tmp/crash.go:54 +0x192

$ cat crash.go
package main

import (
        "encoding/gob"
        "log"
        "os"
)

type foo struct{} // for actual code this struct is of course not empty, but crash is reproducible with it empty.

func main() {
        f, err := os.Open("crash.data")
        if err != nil {
                log.Fatal(err)
        }
        dec := gob.NewDecoder(f)
        for {   
                var i foo // i being 'int' does not trigger it.
                dec.Decode(&i) // I get one or more error returns before it crashes.
        }
}