Is it true that you can die from being whipped?

Yes - but not by: Your garden variety switching with a green limb from your back yard. Flagellation (whipping) has been used through out history as a form of torture or punishment. Individuals may have been whipped hundreds of times. The part of the body whipped, force of the whipping, number of lashes & what they were whipped w (i.e., whips with metal spikes) were determinants of how badly the victim was injured.

Yes: It depends on the severity. We had this in the United States, mostly for wife-beaters, during my lifetime -- the skin wasn't broken and it was mostly about embarrassing the guy. The danger's real. The mechanism is a vasovagal faint from the pain or emotional distress, which is why the operator needs to be alert and lay the perpetrator flat if they start looking shocky.