Synonyms for life-and-death

In the achievement of any relationship we are involved in a life-and-death struggle.

England was hard pressed in life-and-death struggle with Napoleon.

Next moment the two were locked in a life-and-death struggle.

This would seem to indicate a life-and-death matter in the message.

He will be constrained to make a life-and-death struggle to save his old beard.

Was it a life-and-death struggle for ascendancy in the western world?

She, too, had yielded to the madness of a life-and-death struggle.

Be just as careful as if it was a life-and-death matter, will you?

And thus the mass of the people were always in a life-and-death struggle with poverty.

Nay, if they were in life-and-death earnest, what could it avail you in such a case?