This is what will happen.

BTC will slowly decline, talk about segwit and lightning fixing transaction problems is pie in the sky. The coins is broke, the bubble has burst.

Eventually another coin will become no 1, possibly eth. The realization that btc lost will cause a further fall in btc, possibly below bitcoin cash. I mean that's the same coin really but it works.

This will at last force the miners to increase the block size by going for a fork, ironically creating bitcoin cash #2. Allthough its just possible that the miners having seen the writing on the wall just dump their remaining coins (I believe they've probably dumped most by now anyway) and just move to another coin.

Any dangers of bitcoin lightning? Malicious attempts to burden the blockchain by opening thousands of individual channels at the same time?

Interesting to see that you used the word 'surrogates' - do you consider other coins inferior?

There is something big news definitely needed for BTC to break the next resistance. Bitcoin had been going up and down from $13k to $16k level and never broke it's ATH at $19.5k . A big news influencing BTC's growth is definitely needed now to break the new ATH. I think the establishment of the Lightning Network will break the new ATH as it will probably solve the network congestion and huge fees problems of the Bitcoin network.
The LN is being tested now and it gets implemented the network will be running smooth. So there are chances that the BTC will be back on track.

the next big thing in crypto world will be the correction but before that there will be a spike like never before.. exciting time ahead in 2018.. all the best bitcoiners

I can't wait to see bitcoin value keep rising without interruption, how possible that could be, i don't know.
my greatest fear about bitcoin is if bitcoin become banned, eventhough i know it is decentralised,yet i still feel any funny thing could happen any time like hacking of account, so i try as much possible to make the best use of what i get now.  

I think, that in the coming years the bitcoin rate will steadily grow and soon exceed $ 40k, which should be facilitated by entering the Korean exchanges, waiting for the release of bitcoin futures in the USA and Japan, which will allow the institutional investors to enter the market.

Forks are not relevant anymore, in fact, we all would love to see the Lightning network getting implemented on the main blockchain, but we all know that it is impossible because the big bosses and manipulators doesnt want it to get implemented.

By the same time, they are pushing and congestioning the network day by day (like coinbase) and they do not want to integrate segwit to their wallets.

Bitcoin is hardly manipulated at the moment, a single guy, called Roger Ver, is killing bitcoin.