  We propose a novel mechanism of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking which
relies upon an ubiquitous feature of Quantum Field Theory, vacuum condensates.
Such condensates play a crucial r\^{o}le in many phenomena. Examples include
Unruh effect, superconductors, particle mixing, and quantum dissipative
systems. We argue that in all these phenomena supersymmetry, when present, is
spontaneously broken. Evidence for our conjecture is given for the Wess--Zumino
model, that can be considered an approximation to the supersymmetric extensions
of the above mentioned systems. The magnitude of the effect is estimated for a
recently proposed experimental setup based on an optical lattice.
