  We systematically analyze the decay of metastable topological defects that
arise from the spontaneous breakdown of gauge or global symmetries.
Quantum-mechanical tunneling rates are estimated for a variety of decay
processes. The decay rate for a global string, vortex, domain wall, or kink is
typically suppressed compared to the decay rate for its gauged counterpart. We
also discuss the decay of global texture, and of semilocal and electroweak
strings.
