What if Gollum had lived?

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

By "somehow survive" do you mean didn't fall into the Fire? Because as soon as the Ring was unmade he would have in all likelihood almost immediately died of extreme old age, regardless of what anyone else might have thought a suitable sentence for him. He had, after all, lived a little over five times a Hobbit's natural lifespan and the Ring was the only thing keeping him alive.

I don't know that Gollum would have died instantly following the Ring's destruction, but he probably wouldn't have lived very long. One can see the quick change in Bilbo from the time Frodo last saw him in Rivendell to the return from the wedding of Aragorn and Arwen, and multiply that many times.