Create a new empty branch in Git

new empty git branch.md

$ git checkout --orphan NEWBRANCH
$ git rm -rf .

--orphan creates a new branch, but it starts without any commit. After running the above command you are on a new branch "NEWBRANCH", and the first commit you create from this state will start a new history without any ancestry.

You can then start adding files and commit them and they will live in their own branch. If you take a look at the log, you will see that it is isolated from the original log.

instead of creating a new empty branch this wiped all my project files and weeks of work are now gone :)

Yeah, because you nuked everything with rm -rf without doing a git checkout before.

instead of creating a new empty branch this wiped all my project files and weeks of work are now gone :)

Don't experiment with obscure git commands on repositories you do not have backed up, a single remote or even a local copy would've saved you the headache