I don't fear fuds or regulators directly, what I fear immensely is that they may scared away miners. With current difficulty level it may be death spiral( huge difficulty against low hash rate ). To stop this core developers may be forced to hard fork. This may be the end of fireworks for long time..
But I see also light in the tunnel, but I am obliged to stay silent about that at least temporarily
Miners invested in equipment. That's more than electricity. Some get electricity for free or flat. So they'll keep mining.
But you are right - should the price drop extremely low, we may never make it to the next adjustment of difficulty. But frankly I can't see why the price would drop to sub $1 levels. As plausible as gold dropping to sub $1 levels / ounce.