title: What happens to the ThreadPoolExecutor when thread dies in Java
body: <p>I have created a thread which in turn creates a <code>ThreadPoolExecutor</code> and submits some long running tasks to it. At some point, the original thread dies due to unhandled exception/error. What should happen to the executor (it's local to that dead thread, no external references to it)? Should it be GCed or not? </p>
  
  <p>EDIT: this question was formulated incorrectly from the beginning, but I will leave it as Gray provided some good details of how TPE work.</p>