Seems no different than if all N parties with the key were lost. Is there a backup strategy in case the key people are all wiped out simultaneously? How does ICANN handle it?

There was a recent story[0] about a crypto company where everyone "lost" the keys (I assume inside job).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37268750

Yes, if you plan for it. There are several mitigation strategies for this.

The simple approach, if you have enough people you fully trust, is to just have a larger number of participating signers / distributed key-splits than you need, such that you don't actually need a majority of the key-splits to be used, to achieve a signing quorum. (E.g., instead of 2-of-3 signing, you'd use 2-of-4 or 2-of-5 signing.)

In this setup, usually there's a "core" of signers who are active participants in the system, where the required quorum size does constitute a majority of the "core" of signers; and then there are other "backup" signers, who aren't normally participants in signing as part of their job duties, but who can be called upon to act as additional signers in an emergency — usually just to participate in a "handover of power" (activation of new keys) for new signers (e.g. if the CIO and COO die, and you hire a new CIO and COO.)

These signers should not be anyone who any of the "core" signers has power over — not any of their reports, not anyone they can fire, and not their own friends or family. (Personal acquaintances from outside the company do make good "backup" signers, though — an officer's personal accountant is a frequent choice.)

Also, ideally, there should not be enough such "backup" signers that a single "active" signer could collude with the "backup" signers to embezzle funds. The signing configuration should still always imply the need for at least two "active" signers. (So 2-of-4 / 2-of-5 are actually bad configurations; a minimal ideal configuration would be more like 3-of-5 (with one backup signer), or 4-of-7 (with two backup signers); and you don't get both "not a majority" + "at least two active" together until 4-of-9 (2 backup) signing.)

A more expensive version of this approach, but one which could be considered more secure and with less required trust, is to give the extra signing key splits needed to achieve a signing quorum to one or more law firms, under contract to only release those key-splits upon a legal notice of demand from all still-living members of the signing group. The law firm must then verify for itself that 1. enough people are dead that the signing quorum condition can indeed no longer be met without first activating one of the offline'd keys; and 2. exactly all remaining living members of the signing quorum really want the keys released (probably this would be done through in-person individual interviews and notarizations.)

Also, to prevent this arrangement from acting as a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tontine (in the sense that it incentivizes murdering your co-officers), usually there would be a line in this contract stipulating that the keys won't be handed over while the still-living signers are under suspicion of directly or indirectly murdering the dead signers; and that the keys will only be handed over after a 60–90-day delay (which gives time for such a suspicion to arise, if relevant.)

Another mitigation strategy, that works well in combination with either of the above, is for officers with signing keys to leave their password-locked hardware signing device (smart card, crypto wallet, etc.) with a trusted coworker whenever they're going somewhere potentially dangerous; and to leave the password to unlocking said signing device with the executor of their will, only to be released upon their death. In this setup, people who travel are temporarily unable to sign (the person they've entrusted their signing device to doesn't have its password, and so cannot sign for them); so travel scheduling + signing configuration must be planned together to ensure that a signing quorum is always possible to achieve.