This is a question I've posed myself multiple times throughout the course of my RP career. Within tabletop, the concept of a character being injured or even outright dying isn't so much an issue. Sometimes you just get terrible luck with a bad roll and your character gets hurt. But with freeform RP, be that the style of roleplay we mainly write here on the guild, the idea of a character being killed off or injured is left to the player rather than fate/the luck of the dice. And when it comes to roleplays such as zombie apocalypses, low fantasy medieval, etc. (just to give a few examples), this can be a problem, where the danger and the possibility of injury/death is very real yet the character cast generally tends to remain unscathed albeit perhaps shaken at most.

So, my question is: how exactly should character injury and death be handled in a roleplay where it is a possibility? Is your only option, without resulting to dice that is, is to hope your players aren't shy of their characters potentially getting hurt?