Aristotle held that fear requires some faint hope of escape

Evidence

Fear is associated with the expectation that something destructive will happen to us…. People do not believe this when they are, or think they are, in the midst of great prosperity, and are in consequence insolent, contemptuous, and reckless… nor yet when they have experienced every kind of horror already and have grown callous about the future [for] there must be some faint expectation of escape. …Fear sets us thinking what can be done, which of course nobody does when things are hopeless. Consequently, when it is advisable that the audience should be frightened, the orator must make them feel that they are really in danger. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1657

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the rhetorical function of fear in persuasion, relevant to research on threat appeals in political communication and fear-based campaigning.
• CANDY: A quoteable nugget: fear only motivates when there is perceived hope of escape; hopeless people aren’t frightened into action.