Why wouldn't the "minority", in preparation, prepare and circulate software
for an immediate hardfork and transfer to a lower difficulty on the minority chain?
So create a 3rd chain that can survive and attempt to compete against the 2nd chain.
(Let the 1st chain die immediately.)
War is war and if the minority wants to survive, they will do all that they can to do so.
The Ethereum debacle has proven that these topics and situations are more serious
than the average user or public knows or cares to know. Assumptions need to be put to bed.
For our community to take actions, such as Hardforks, we need to know or have a high
percentage of backing (Maybe more than 95%?). Otherwise we are just hurting ourselves
and the bitcoin community and economy. ETH Classic only needed 10% of the hashrate to,
within a week, siphon away $230,000,000.00 USD from their market cap. (About 1/4th).)
Chain splits are like evil twins that appear over night. Ignore them at your peril.
...To my knowledge, a majority of the time a chain split results in the currency failing due to either sell-offs or other similar things, and no-one cares about the second chain (or the first) at some point. Ethereum got lucky, and now we have a great investment tool until the two chains equal each other in value and one of the chains gets absorbed.
To my knowledge, when a purposeful fork occurs that creates two chains, the "old chain" almost always
dies immediately because the "old chain" is being "replaced by a social contract conforming upgrade".
In the Ethereum situation, there was no hardfork to "upgrade & replace", it was a hardfork to "return"
the "stolen" ETH (inside TheDAO) by breaking Ethereum's social contract and violate the intention and
purpose of a blockchain system. Most people want a chain with "upgrades", not "downgrades". Due to this,
two chains have a purpose and can exist at the same time.
Also, it may be true that the two chains value may come to parity, but one of the two chains does not
have to be absorbed into the other. Most likely event is that one will dump with such a large amount that
one side is destroyed with hundreds of bagholders. Those funds from the dump may go into the surviving
chain, or it may not, since the project as a whole is damaged for investments.
The idea that one of the two chains can be absorbed into the other is very not likely.
They are seperate now and users on the losing chain will not be absorbed. They are lost.