Failed projects don’t die; they agonize, mutate, and compete for resources with good projects. Bad engineering projects undergo many transformations except proper cancellation: rescoping, merging, rebranding, reassignment, or slow suffocation, but never clean termination. Aimless projects persist because killing them is tough. Sunk costs create incentives to continue, while the stigma of cancellation is (still) associated with failure and prevents decision-makers from wielding the axe.