Suggestion for getting the computer to recognize a dead position

Here chess.stackexchange.com/questions/22555/is-the-dead-position-problem-solvable a suggestion I saw for how to get a computer to recognize a dead positions was to have the computer use brute force to search for helpmates as opposed to getting the computer to directly detect dead positions like a human would. The idea is that if the computer finds a helpmate then it allows the game to continue, but if after searching through some very large game tree it fails to find any helpmates it ends the game and declares a draw.

I wrote a helpmate solver into Stockfish years ago, and it's very slow.

@Toadofsky How slow is the helpmate solver you wrote?

Sigh... first, it's "I have a suggestion" based upon misreading a comment elsewhere:
> In sum, I do not believe you can have an algorithm that is 100% accurate in distinguishing between dead and alive positions that runs in reasonable time. Brute force is the only 100% reliable method, but it is definitely not efficient. You can get a decent success rate for "practical" positions with heuristics, but it will not be 100% accurate, even for real game positions.
chess.stackexchange.com/a/22764

... and then the interrogation begins. Anyway, here's my code if you want to figure out how to test it:
github.com/ddugovic/Stockfish/