We survived without stickies before, how about we just keep the sticky threads up for a week or two then bring them down once discussion comes to a halt in them.
ECross, when you said merge the stickies, did you mean the "Popular Links" ones? In that case, it's probably not a bad idea, that way they'd consolidate into a single thread in the General forum or something along those lines. I've un-stuck two threads in the Software forum already since discussion had come to a stand still in them.