The first actually insightful comment under the OP. I agree all of it.

If SO manages to stay online, it'll still be there for #2 people to present their problems. Don't underestimate the number of bored people still scouring the site for puzzles to solve.

SE Inc, the company, are trying all kinds of things to revitalize the site, in the service of ad revenue. They even introduced types of questions that are entirely exempt from moderation. Those posts feel literally like reddit or any other forum. Threaded discussions, no negative scores, ...

If SE Inc decides to call it quits and shut the place down and freeze it into a dataset, or sell it to some SEO company, that would be a loss.