This is the last of a four-part series (part 1, part 2, part 3) on how I think that our futures might unfurl given the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. What could happen? These are some alternatives that I have picked out for different time frames – they are not contiguous like a reverse history – in fact some items would seem very surely not to lead to the later futures. I think this is more interesting as a small space exploration. So let’s take a look at these!
Given that we live in a time dense with disruptive forces and trends, and considering the changes necessary to survive the assault of the pandemic of the year, we will see changes to the futures.
In a recently published essay, Leah Zaidi, an Independent Scholar in Toronto, Canada, indicated that there might only be three important trends to consider for future proofing. These are [paraphrased]:
- Climate change.
- Equal and just society.
- Artificial Intelligence.
I somewhat agree. From the list repeated in the previous posts we see that these are indeed powerful trends. I see the overlap as follows
The Pandemic and Artificial Intelligence affect in the other trends. The Energy Shift and Climate Change are inextricably locked together with some overlap in the economic and fairness issues of the Social Justice and Values Shift which on their own have great weight on how we will behave and the shape of our futures. Here are four possible scenarios:
Scenario 1
2045 US Western perspective
With repetitive pandemics over the last decades Big Medicine is leading the US. The Doctocracy is in everything. I check my hot zone maps for general information for any travel such as weekly client meetings or longer-distance leisure or other work plans. Not having the right immunizations or genetic predispositions can get you a day in a very uncomfortable set of PPE at the least and refused entry at the worst. Health care is not a political issue – it is patriotism to be healthy, to be considerate of others when you are out and about.
Solar energy has made fantastic efficiency strides and with the extreme negative interest rates of the late 20’s and early 30’s you see panels instead of rooftops. The constant cloud cover has made that efficiency as well as massive quantities necessary. I was born at the turn of the century and I have seen the climate change from clear days punctuated by tremendous storms to overcast with a few breaks and still tremendous storms. The release of the methane gas bubbles from the frozen lakes and deep oceans finally tipped the balance for greenhouse gasses.
Food prices are high, but we have good distribution and the underground interstate transport system moves nearly everything that was on the over the road trucks in the past. The autonomous high-speed trains running in the Boring Co. tunnels are silent and consume very little energy per ton and per capita due to extremely low friction and the light weight influences of nanotechnology on materials of construction.
Universal Basic Income is nicknamed “Regina Bucks” (RB – after the martyred liberal senator that introduced the original bill) and is available to every household in the US providing they meet criteria. Every year the RB criteria is batted about as a political shuttlecock trying to move the compensation up or down, pushing the family, citizenship, and social credit requirements in this direction or that, but the voting citizenry is quick to push the “button” in the Social web and let the elected know their will. It is a political third rail. Don’t mess with my Reginas.
The US is still on track to become a white, non-Hispanic minority state by 2050. The 2060 projected makeup is:
While the race numbers tell one story, racial intolerance has been brought to its knees by globalization of citizenship, domestic cohabitation practices, and values evolution away from early 2000’s traditional perspectives.
Scenario 2
2040 US Western Perspective
After the big scare from the Pandemic of 2020 things died down for several years – almost a full decade before UOPID-29 [Unknown Origin Prion Infectious Disease; first encountered in 2029] began felling citizens almost simultaneously in national capitols all over the world. Quarantine was immediate and the old shutdown plans were put into place, but this was a different kind of bug – quickly wiping out the nervous system and brain, this prion-based disease was contagious and passed by human contact. A complacent public and unfocused governments all over the world quickly lost lives to the excruciating disease which disappeared almost as soon as at arrived wiping a clean 3% of the global population from existence in a period of 2 ½ years. After a terrible year, the leader of a radical bio-hacking group in New York City was arrested based on some forensic data mined evidence that tied together multiple global trails and transactions eventually unraveling the entire group. The group followed an extreme right-wing manifesto based on the rightful domination of specific genetic groups over others. The disturbing images of the raids on the hundreds of storehouses around the globe and the subsequent deaths of nearly every person involved in the clean-up due to the inability to field mobilize proper PPE for safe police/military actions in prion rich environments was a global tragedy of loss that touched everyone … everyone. Specific international cooperation is in effect for information on actions which could lead to a repeat of this terror and it has not been repeated – yet.
A major leap in domestic law enforcement has come with “ride along AI” for civil enforcement professionals. “Civys” as they are called are non-uniformed individuals with 4 years of training followed by 2-year internships, followed by national board examinations. Civys identify themselves verbally and by lighting up transponders when engaging in incidents. Every communications device in a set area is notified and video camera turned on record and the feed being stored at a publicly available location. Most news outlets have bots following these incidents with feed interruption protocols for significant events as determined by the outlet’s editorial board. The AI ride along helps the Civy determine what resources are needed for particular situations such as Social Services, Fire professionals, EMT, Health & Psych Board, and SWAT. The Civy has instant access to not only the background of say an individual in the incident, but of everyone in the specified area in case there are nefarious, familial, or recidivist connections. But the crowning glory of the system is non-lethal arrest. No person has been killed in an arrest scenario in 5 years in any part of the US. There are still shoot-outs and death by cop (Civy) scenarios, but these are so well documented and so public, that there is little question in the mind of the citizenry, robo-courts, or internal affairs when the final report is compiled.
Scenario 3
2030 US Western Perspective
The Balkanization of the US political system from the pressures of the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections and the inevitable breakdown of the two historic parties into splintered political interests more representative of the values, concerns and ambitions of the American people has led to new kinds of parliamentarian process in the constitutional legislative bodies at the federal level. Numerous parties appealing at the grassroots level have managed to send representatives to the capitol, some familiar such as the Green party, the Communist party, and BLM, as well as the more aptly named Conservative and Liberal parties shorn of the trappings of the historic Republican and Democratic parties. Versatile politicians skilled in combining agendas with other parties are most successful in the new environ, but change still moves slowly with exaggerated cries (by all sides) of unfairness, lack of basic understanding, and scandalous collusions for greed.
The conversion of the major oil companies to “carbon management concerns” has resulted in a slowing of the deterioration of the Anthropocene era climate, but while the feared tipping point is not reached, the new normal of weather, fire, flooding at the coasts, and the steady north and southward march of arable land for food production has created a new order for the production of food. Big Food has solicited thousands of new farming scientists, nutritional experts, and agricultural engineers to solve the problems of slowly moving bands of environmentally productive land. The Dutch have created thousands of additional acres from the sea for indoor cultivation and continue to be the breadbasket of Europe – especially since the novel invention of the plant-based egg substitute (excellent taste and better for health).
A scandalous fraud case involving boutique anti-viral agents was prosecuted in 2025 following the highly visible deaths of some wealthy elite. Following the Pandemic of 2020, black market vaccinations, medicines, and treatment regimens began to color the entire spectrum of medicine. With drug incidents ranging from smuggled Chinese vaccinations rumored given to top Asian leaders, to pedestrian conmen peddling snake-oil remedies, fear drove a market that is believed to have topped the old illegal drug market [which was generally legalized and put under FDA regulation this year]. The untimely and awful deaths of the elites that had been experimenting on themselves with promising back market drugs, vaccines, and supplements led to House investigations and the doubling of the manpower and budget for the FDA’s enforcement branch including new AI resources, credentialing, powers, and standard issue side-arms.
Scenario 4
2025 US Southern Geography perspective
The ocean of failing students from the Great Shutdown of 2020 gave rise to an education renaissance that had been bubbling in the background since the 1960’s rejection of the military industrial complex. Reevaluation of the skills individuals required to function productively in a learning/information society led to:
- Legislative changes such as information access as a human right,
- Educational changes such as customized individual curriculum, the separation of the teaching professional skill set from the teaching technologist,
- and the recognition of do versus know as salable skills in the civil economy.
Excess capacity in private wind and solar power causes utilities’ profitability to drop which in turn requires increased prices for retail electricity and beginning the death spiral for all but the most efficient centralized plants. Rolling brown outs have been occasionally been instituted in small areas heavy on renewable power sources when weather conditions reduce generation below that needed to “top off” the remaining central plants. A Bill is introduced to bring solar panel recycling under federal control following a major hurricane that left acres of damaged panels to be disposed of by FEMA contractors.
The 2024 presidential election is an easy win for the Democrats as the Republican party has split into three deeply divided factions. The 2022 Federal legislative elections saw the first of the special interest parties competing with Green Party and openly Socialist party candidates on the ballots with serious results. 2024 sees a sea change with the 33 seats contested in the Senate, the new reality of micro interest geographies becomes evident as the new reality.
Ground breaking for the underground transcontinental New York to Los Angeles via Dallas hyperloop is expected to occur late next year as the “Infrastructure For the Future” bill rolls through the Congress picking up pork for each state not on the path. The power for the system is an unconventional pairing of an LNG pipeline at cryogenic temperatures bathing a superconductor core injected with electricity from all sorts of power plants along the way including, hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal. The science fiction plans involve connecting the cryo-grid to the equator to power a space elevator umbilical. This IFF bill includes language for project contracting requirements for women and minority owned businesses as well as gender and disability minorities.
The incredible debt left behind the Trump administration began to color world markets with inflation causing a hysteresis of interest rates, but most interestingly US GDP approached near parity with China in 2024. In 2025, China’s PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) is nearly double that of the US – compared to nearly equal in early 2021. The Silk Road initiative continues to buy into poorer countries infrastructure with a few terrible failures, but sufficient success to continue the sway of Big Eastern influence to the concern of their geographic neighbors. The Japanese have brought the constitutional amendment for rearming to the floor annually for three years now but it remains bitterly unpopular and deeply divisive.
Summary
And there you have it, four of my own scenarios of possible futures for the coming decades. I hope that you find something here that you had not thought of, or that at least made you think about the possibilities and how we might avoid the unpleasant and strive for the preferred.
Best wishes for your futures!
