However, this isn't really true, especially the part about death being forbidden. Nevertheless, the myth has spread widely and is often reported as fact, according to IFL Science.
But this begs the question: is there anywhere on Earth where it is actually illegal to die?
The answer is short. It's a sort of dubious shrug. Over the years, various places have "banned" death, but the act has been less an effort to legally punish useless people who die and more an effort to draw attention to some subtle political or social issue.
In August 2015, the mayor of the Italian hillside town of Sellia signed a decree banning people from becoming "ill within the municipality" and made it clear that they couldn't die there either. Anyone caught defying the law by not having regular health checks could be fined 10 euros a year.
At first glance, this is an "absurd rule that demands the impossible", but the law was passed with the aim of promoting healthier lifestyles for local residents.
The underlying logic was that Sellia was struggling with a dwindling population, and so the law was introduced to encourage citizens to take better care of their health or face higher taxes.
Similarly, in 2000 and 2008, two villages in France banned their inhabitants from dying. In both cases, the local authorities were unable to obtain permission to extend their cemeteries, so, in protest, they decided to solve the problem by discouraging death itself.
The same tactic was adopted by the authorities in Biritiba Mirim, Brazil, in 2005, and Falciano del Massico, Italy, in 2012.
Dr. Russell Moul
As you can imagine, the irrational nature of these laws eventually resulted in them obtaining permission to expand their cemeteries.
Then there's the ban on dying for reasons of purity. Although it's not very common practice these days, there are some historical cases in which death was forbidden for religious reasons.
In Ancient Greece, the island of Delos, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was considered so sacred that efforts were made to keep it free of deaths and births - basically anything related to the confusion of human existence.
In the 6th century BC, Peisistratus, the Athenian leader, ordered the island's tombs to be dug up and, later, anyone who was likely to die or was about to give birth was escorted off the island.
What is clear from these examples is that the prohibition of death, when not related to religious rules, was always an effort to challenge local issues related to health or the availability of burial spaces.
So, "although they may be absurd at first glance, they are proof that sometimes the ridiculous can be very practical".
