Here's an interesting little thing that just happened in my game. Could a resident of Sunset Valley not part of the players household actually have a self preservation instinct? Not likely, but...
While one of the sims in my household was out fishing the other was sitting at home with out much to do when she got an invite to a party being thrown by Jamie Jolina.
Not having anything better to do I had my sim accept the invite and attend the party. When my sim got there Jamie Jolina was somehow trapped in the wall right next to her front door. I promptly clicked on her and did a "Reset Sim" via Master Controller but that didn't work. It just reset her right inside the wall again.
So I switched households to hers so I could go into Build/Buy mode on her lot and knock down the wall at the end of the space she was trapped in so she could just walk out then switch back to my household.
The thing is, if she hadn't thrown a party and invited a sim in the player's household she most certainly would have died in that wall space. It's almost as if she called out for help the only way she could, by throwing a party to which apparently my sim was the only one invited since no one else showed up. Kind of spooky if you think about it.