“Or an explosion in the E&E bay under the cockpit floor (with 3 access doors on the outside of the aircraft) could take out a lot of things including the pilots, with the aircraft still flying (albeit not automatically).”
Here’s my scenario: improper maint on the nose gear doors resulted in a catastrophic failure of the doors at 38k, which knocked out the comms, autopilot and fly-by-wire, and put the plane in a nose-down trim. 18 minutes later they impacted the ground.
Or zombies.
I think that is a likely scenario, or a bomb.