You're speaking like a hard fork is a certainty. I don't think it is. A fork only occurs if there is significant difference of opinion about how to continue forward. Gavin, who of course has a lot of influence over that issue, said this:
A hard fork won't happen unless the vast super-majority of miners support it.
E.g. from my "how to handle upgrades" gist
https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/2355445Example: increasing MAX_BLOCK_SIZE (a 'hard' blockchain split change)
Increasing the maximum block size beyond the current 1MB per block (perhaps changing it to a floating limit based on a multiple of the median size of the last few hundred blocks) is a likely future change to accomodate more transactions per block. A new maximum block size rule might be rolled out by:
New software creates blocks with a new block.version
Allow greater-than-MAX_BLOCK_SIZE blocks if their version is the new block.version or greater and 100% of the last 1000 blocks are new blocks. (51% of the last 100 blocks if on testnet)
100% of the last 1000 blocks is a straw-man; the actual criteria would probably be different (maybe something like block.timestamp is after 1-Jan-2015 and 99% of the last 2000 blocks are new-version), since this change means the first valid greater-than-MAX_BLOCK_SIZE-block immediately kicks anybody running old software off the main block chain.
This route makes sense to me as it's essentially a self-authorizing change. In other words, either the super-majority of miners agree with change or no change happens.
