Around here, it's the squirrels and chipmunks who eat the corn. They love the stuff. Never tried it, but if it's a real concern, I've heard about this to stop squirrels from eating edible bulbs: plant, then put down chicken wire. Squirrels can't dig through it, but the plants can grow up through it. When they're big enough, you can remove it.

It has nothing to do with fertilizing or weather (at least not by itself). Yeah, it's a genetic trait. It is a throwback trait to when corn (or a corn ancestor) had female and male flowers in the same spot. (not necessarily teosinte though as teosinte also has seperate male and female flowers) If you don't like it like that, then dont save seeds from that plant, and/or choose a different variety next year. If you do like that trait, you probably could breed that trait to occur more often. Here is a link that might be useful: Corn with cob on top

I think your chances of getting a good crop are excellent as long as you don't have a bunch of raccoons hanging around, and as long as you have a method of preventing or mitigating damage from corn earworm and European corn borers. Normally, corn that has lodged (blown over) will straighten itself back up. I've had stalks that were 8' tall when they lodged just straighten themselves right back up on the next day, especially if it is a hot sunny day. If the corn hasn't done that after 3 or 4 days, then it might not straighten up on its own. If it doesn't straighten up on its own, you can straighten it up, but normally it will stand back up just fine. Now, my experience is only with well-amended clay because I don't have much sandy soil. If you have extremely sandy soil and it is extremely wet, the corn may find it harder to stand up and remain standing. Maybe someone here who raises corn in really sandy soil can comment on whether or not having sandy soil makes a difference. When I had a smaller garden, and less rows of corn plants, I'd just straighten up the corn myself the next morning. The bigger the garden became and the more corn I planted, the less time I had available, so now the corn needs to stand up on its own or it likely will lie on the ground for the rest of its life. I have 5 varieties of corn growing and none of them blew over this morning in the strong thunderstorm, so we likely didn't have wind that was as strong here as what you had there. My corn ranges in height from 3.5' tall to 7 or 8' tall, depending on the variety and how early it was planted, and I think it only has lodged twice this year. That's pretty typical for my location. The main danger of having lodged corn is that, if it is silking while it is lodged, the pollen may miss the silks when it falls since the plants are not standing upright with the tassels directly over the silks. If that were to happen, your corn ears might not have good kernel production. If I had corn that was silking and it was lodged, I probably wouldn't wait any longer than 24 hours for it to straighten up, and then I'd try to find time to straighten it up for myself so the ears wouldn't be affected by poor pollination.

Rodents or birds come to mind as possible culprits.