I will be so, so happy when this hypothesis actually gets tested by someone 
I'm having too much trouble with multicoin and will look at modifying bitcoin directly (creating a new block chain and all). I'm not a C++ maven, so don't expect anything soon.
People don't behave rationally during a panic, and I don't think you can rule one out.
I'm sure panics will happen, but people who behave rationally would earn a lot of money from those who panic. I think it will sort itself out without destroying the currency. However, we won't know until the coin is created.