I think one of the reason why the Core team insists on soft fork and no hard fork is for backward compatibility, so that someone can still run their strip-down 0.5.3 node.

But I presume everyone already knows that if you bury those paper wallets in the backyard, it is going to turn into dust in a few years.  Same thing as if someone bury those fiat cash (non polymer ones), you will end up with only those shiny metallic security stripe.  Some govt/bank will allow you to exchange those metallic security stripe into new notes, but don't bet on it.

So if people insist on burying their paper wallet, use something like CryptoSteel or just stamp your private keys (part of it or "encrypted") onto metal sheets or AU kilobars.