The authors use fragments of analytic sessions with children who were being treated at the time a catastrophe occurred in which a train struck a school bus, killing forty children and severely injuring many others. The authors conclude that 1, by identification, the death of other children forces the child to confront his own death; 2, fear of death makes the child relive basic separation anxieties, such as birth and weaning; 3, the re-enacting of death in the sessions includes all projected ego elements based on death wishes; and 4, the danger of having to re-elaborate the death instinct that has been projected becomes almost intolerable, and therefore hostility is turned against the self. The reasons include the labile ego of the child, intense anxiety in the face of death, and the attempt to elaborate these depressive mechanisms in a slow but controlled way. When the mechanism of defense fails, somatic disturbances appear, mainly respiratory and gastrointestinal.