There are 100 prisoners, numbered 1-100. The prisoners' numbers are written onto 100 cards, put randomly into 100 envelopes numbered 1-100. They can't communicate, but are invited, one by one, to open 50 envelopes. If any prisoner fails to find his number, they all get killed.
The answer is already elsewhere in this thread, so I'll try to give a hint. The prisoners can't communicate, but all prisoners gain access to new information that is common to all of them while they're opening the envelopes. They could use this to decide which envelopes to open.