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And I don't mean a thing that further zombifies it.

Currently, despite Reddit's state and really unpopular leadership, its traffic doesn't show the signs of decline. In fact, it seems to be the opposite.

So what would be the least drastic things that could finally put Reddit on a course that would make its userbase bleed out, putting its traffic on a decline? Or things that would somehow make Reddit meet its sudden end? Could be a combination of several things as well.

A better competitor. But that's not happening anytime soon.

You just can't kill the most homogenized and popular Internet forum famous for killing countless forums like it.

Simple. Demonetization. Every time someone gives an award on reddit, they're giving reddit money. Every time you see an ad on reddit, you're giving them money.

So, if everyone were to use adblock and stop gifting gold, reddit would tank.

Same as every other site that got killed;
major redesign that is very bad (luckily the old reddit design is still active, the new is awful), porn ban, excessive ads, clutter, or unwillingness fix bugs.

myspace died due to too many ads and too cluttered of a UI. tumblr died from unwillingness to fix bugs and porn ban. Digg died from a UI ban (and I think too many ads? can't remember).

Basically this, only way to successfully kill reddit is if the ads get too invasive, they outright ban all porn and NSFW subreddits, have a really bad UI update and a extremely next level Watergate tier controversy surrounding the upper echelons of the company that runs reddit. Even then that controversy has to be massive enough to cause people to just denounce using the site in droves.

If Reddit could have had their 2010 policies and moderation all the way in 2020 and then suddenly, within a single day, switch it to current polices, could that have killed Reddit?

what policies and moderation changed between 2010 and 2020?

Things not necessarily illegal got against terms of service, subreddits got banned, moderators started politically leaning on one political side , lots of user bans and shadowbans occured, things that got exposure in frontpage got changed, upvoting posts against the rules is not a bannable offense etc.

besides the last thing, all of that was true in 2010.

I don't think anything could, it's one of those " too big to fail" situations

If it were to die, it would have to happen gradually over time.

Big controversies would speed things up somewhat, but couldn't kill it all on their own.

A coordinated and widespread ballistic missile attack on their servers and headquarters?

Jokes aside, a decent competitor with good enough publicity (read: Youtubers and other Online Personalities openly supporting it) combined with all their current issues getting worse to the point of the site becoming borderline unusable would do it in my opinion.

I really really don't think you understand the concept of too big to fail. Or do you really think reddit shutting down would ruin the economy?