There are cautionary tails about everything humans do. Good leadership and the desire to survive can keep some of us around. If we have to stay down there for thousands of generations, well, it won't affect me or anyone I know. We can jump off the evolutionary bridge when we get to it. Ideally our automatons would be geoengineering the planet to make the surface hospitable once again prior to our becoming Trogs.
I would posit that good leadership and desire to survive could prevent humanity from retreating to the earth like naked mole rats.
It very well could. I like having contingency plans and not letting my survival and the survival of our civilization solely depend on the promises of congress critters. I also want to learn earth bending from the giant badgermoles so I am biased.
I hadn't considered the badgermole angle..fair enough. Have this webcomic that I spent more trying to find than I should because I get flashbacks whenever I hear people throw out the "we'll live underground" angle