Fine, which is why I'm okay with a declarative syntax for turning on the error handling (that is off by default). It can be something like %SIG, or come to thing of it, pragmatic behavior lexically defined.

use closefail qw(:standard);
use closefail { die "I'm not feeling so well: $!" };
[download]

There are plenty of ways this could be improved, I'm sure. for one thing, the naming is just the first thing that came to mind.

One possible complication in implementing this, however, is that the scope of this declaration needs to include the closing of the current scope, if you pardon the pun. So you can say this:

{
    use closefail;
    open my $thing, $what or die "...";
    # ...
}   # <- still in effect as this block ends
[download]

Instead of:

{
    use closefail;
    {
        open my $thing, $what or die "...";
        # ...
    }
}
[download]