So, after what happened.. turns out I was both wrong and right.

If a viable solution is posted before 12:01AM Pacific Time (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015, the story will continue to Ch. 121.

Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending.

So failure would have just meant the end, and yet there was nothing to worry about: the much larger audience managed to figure out a space of much more effective solutions, along with a much more hilarious space of failures.