Exactly. I was thinking that in the event of some damage being done by a {bug,attack}, the network effect and vested interest of every party will have them act

Exactly. I was thinking that in the event of some damage being done by a {bug,attack}, the network effect and vested interest of every party will have them act in saving the network. The value of bitcoin is the collective belief of every human brain that believes it has value. So it’s trivial to redirect that belief in a new fork or something - similar to how Ethereum did with their DAO hack.