Death enters psychoanalytic theory in the middle of an epoch-making “plague.” We must not forget that Freud begins working on Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the book that brings us the “death drive,” in March 1919, that is, in the middle of the 1918 influenza pandemic. This article describes the devastating impact the pandemic had on Freud's life as well as the creative act that literally and figuratively brings the death drive to life.