Oh, sure: https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Save_scumming I wrote "nhsave" and "nhload" scripts when I was a kid and didn't know you weren't supposed to do this ("they didn't include a save/load function? how dumb").

Edit: If you really want this, you can always enter explore mode (e.g. with `nethack -X`), which makes death optional. It doesn't make the rest of the game any easier, though.