What are the implications of an infection that corrupts or deletes wallet.dat? This sounds like a question that is brought up often, but that's what the newbie spot is for
As long as you keep a valid backup somewhere you will be fine. You could even have a paper backup that a computer virus would be hard pressed to delete.
The coins will always be in the blockchain but without access to the wallet there is absolutely no way of accessing them. They are therefore considered gone forever. If the wallet were somehow able to be recovered they would still work since they never left the blockchain. The coins exist only in the blockchain. Your wallet is simply the passwords needed to show ownership and to spend them which is then reflected in the chain by miners.
Could some bigger parties with ulterior motives be driving the price up so high they hope the drop will be fatal? Could the Fed be printing dollars to drive the price up to $1 trillion so they don't have to mint that platinum coin?
If you don't need the coins instantly put an order in on CampBX and you could probably get them for under Mt. Gox price. I've had good luck with them but with smaller amounts. Volume is lower there so it would take longer to fill your order.
Newer versions of android let you encrypt the entire phone. I just flashed my old Mesmerize to 4.2.2 and it has an encryption option. Other than that just make sure you use something like Lookout and don't install apps from strange sites or with crazy permission requests.