You can decentralize the reporting of an individual's death using Schelling point consensus, which is what we use to decide Augur's prediction markets on Ethere

You can decentralize the reporting of an individual's death using Schelling point consensus, which is what we use to decide Augur's prediction markets on Ethereum. In brief, we distribute a token to a "reporters." At the appropriate time, reporters submit their decisions about events. Reporters who deviate from the consensus lose some of their token balance, which is redistributed to the honest reporters. If an event is ambiguous, reporters report that fact itself instead of guessing at what everyone else will report. Oracles will be fine for some use cases. Schelling consensus works for others. There are many ways to get real world information into Ethereum, and many ways to reflect how well real world actors adhere to their commitments.