Extreme death feigning, longevity, and blue color make adult beetles of Asbolus verrucosus LeConte, 1851 (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) popular pets and demonstration insects. Additionally, autohemorrhaging in death-feigning larvae facilitates debris-based camouflage. The A. verrucosus genome was examined to gain insight into longevity and death feigning in this insect. A short-read assembly (∼250 Mbp) encoded > 90% of expected arthropod-specific proteins. The sex chromosomes represented 26.3% of the bivalent lengths and the haploid portion of the male genome (2n = 14; 6AA + Xy). Longevity-associated proteins for nutrient signaling and genome maintenance were present but require further investigation. For example, Sirtuin 6 harbored only two of the five amino acid changes known to enhance DNA repair and longevity. Comparative genomics identified non-synonymous substitutions in A. verrucosus proteins that were exclusive to long-duration death-feigning tenebrionids. The proteins are central to the development and function of neuromuscular junctions and may define a death-feigning pathway in insects. High-copy protein-coding contigs (3–300 copies/genome) were related to reflex bleeding (innate immunity and and melanization), longevity (response to stress, DNA repair, stem cell maintenance), and death feigning (neuronal development and signaling). Notably, telomerase-activating and stabilizing protein-coding regions were among the multicopy loci, along with loci encoding haponin and heat-shock proteins. It is tempting to conjecture that A. verrucosus is genetically poised for hormesis, where a small stress signal promotes an amplified protective response. The A. verrucosus genome is one of the few annotated tenebrionid genomes available and has impacted phylogenomic comparisons of insects and important gene families. The annotated genome was deposited into public databases under project PRJNA354432.