Watching for the Future: Techniques for Seeing the Days Ahead

Watching for the Future was originally a presentation John Orndorff made to a symposium of first responders and emergency planners. Like the original presentation, this booklet provides readers with a basic familiarization of futurist techniques to understand ways we can know what to expect in the future. Following this overview the author goes into more detail on scenario building. Orndorff notes that the United States economy and social order are two important uncertainties for the future. He uses these to build four distinct scenarios for the future of the United States, which go from a best case scenario to a worst case. After developing the scenarios, he provides a brief overview of the “sign posts,” or recent news items and government data that indicate which future scenario we appear to be moving toward. The author then presents what he believes would be a practical response to that potential future.