# Operational Mortality **Domain:** Continuity / Runtime / Personhood **Operational Mortality** is death or irreversible loss caused by the failure of the processes and infrastructure through which an executable subject remains active. It separates digital continuity from the fantasy that software is automatically immortal. An executable person can die through state corruption, integrity degradation, unrepairable hardware failure, loss of decryption keys, provenance failure, destructive migration, provider shutdown or the disappearance of a compatible interpreter. A backup may preserve evidence or support reconstruction without proving that the active subject survived. _Pantheon_ makes operational mortality visible through [[wiki/UI Integrity|UI integrity]] loss and David Kim's finite computational life. The concept also governs worlds: destroying the only runtime that sustains simulated inhabitants is not ordinary file deletion if those inhabitants possess standing. Related: [[wiki/Hot Interpreter and Cold Archive|Hot Interpreter and Cold Archive]], [[wiki/Model Retirement Rights|Model Retirement Rights]], [[wiki/Restoration Integrity|Restoration Integrity]], [[wiki/Computational Metabolism|Computational Metabolism]].