**Death anxiety** is the fear of death and non-being — usually unconscious, and, in the existential tradition, a hidden engine of much that we build and defend. ## Summary For Ernest Becker ([[The Denial of Death]]), the awareness of mortality is the human predicament: we are animals who know we will die, and culture is the species-wide defence against that knowledge. Terror management theory carried the claim into the lab, showing that reminders of death intensify clinging to worldviews, self-esteem and groups. The defences take familiar shapes: living on through children or through work, vanity and its cousin narcissism, and — at the collective level — religious dogma, nationalism, prejudice and the search for enemies. Robert Firestone extends the list inward: the [[The Fantasy Bond|fantasy bond]] and the [[The Voice|voice]] are themselves death-anxiety defences, formed when the child first feels the terror of separation and helplessness. The alternative the existentialists offer is not a cure but a stance: accepting mortality rather than anaesthetising against it, which is what makes an open, undefended life possible. `Concepts:` [[The Fantasy Bond]] · [[The Voice]] · [[Meaning]] `Knowledge Base:` [[The Denial of Death]] · [[The Self Under Siege]] · [[Fear of Freedom]]