is it dead before pen even hits the paper?
Yes.
If a wallet is lost (all data wiped), you can't retrieve the private keys from it anymore.
An ICO claiming to do that would mean they have a way to hack private keys from specified addresses which is impossible.
In the meantime you can check this out:
https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/statsLE.
Actually, I don't doubt that you will still find enough suckers on this forum even for this idea.