I'm pretty sure that getting blown up and buried in a 30 foot hole makes you dead. It doesn't matter if you head can still talk, you can't do anything, so you're dead.
Not sure where all this malnutrition talk is coming from, though. For his sake, I hope he can die from malnutrition or by not pleasing his god, otherwise, he really is going to spend eternity at the bottom of a hole.