Defense against implosion

[SaintRidley]

I hate to get drawn into this. However.

Does anything in the rules draw any connection at all between the [death] descriptor and "death effects"?

Indirectly - Circle of Death is a [Death] spell and most certainly a death effect. Undeath to Death does exactly the same thing as Circle of Death but lacks the [Death] descriptor. This would logically be due to the immunity undead have to death effects, thus making removing the [Death] tag a way to prevent internal contradiction in the spell.