What's the best that could happen?

Photo by Nicolas Houdayer on Unsplash

As we begin 2026, as the smoke from last night's fireworks fades, the mood music from the so-called experts can often seem grim.

After all, if you aren't in media predicting the End of Democracy, or better still, the End of the World as We Know It, you aren't making enough of a splash in this day and age of the 24-hour news cycle and doom-scrolling.

What are we to make of it?

Economists, epidemiologists, security analysts, and climate modelers have all been busy publishing their lists of things that could go catastrophically wrong over the next year. Taken together, they read less like sober forecasting and more like a miserable dress rehearsal for the heat death of the universe.

The first fear is the big one: a major war widening beyond anyone’s control. Regional conflicts already feel like they’re one miscalculation away from pulling in global powers. History tells us escalation sometimes takes everyone by surprise, even decision makers at the highest levels of government, working for the most powerful and wealthiest nations in the world.

Second is a global economic shock. Debt levels are historically high, markets are jittery, and faith in institutions is thin as gossamer silk. One banking failure, one currency crisis, one panic—and suddenly “soft landing” becomes a punchline. Like Black Friday.

Third, there’s the return of the pandemic nightmare. Scientists warn that zoonotic spillovers haven’t slowed, surveillance is patchy, and public trust is shattered. The next outbreak may not get the benefit of the doubt—or even the most basic compliance with preventative and treatment measures.

Fourth comes infrastructure collapse, from cyberattacks on power grids to fragile supply chains snapping again.

And finally, the quiet one: social unraveling. Loneliness, distrust, and radicalization don’t make headlines like wars or viruses, but they hollow societies from within.

It's distressing to contemplate these sobering predictions.

But what if the best happens?

Because the giant panda is back. Against all the odds.

Declared functionally extinct just decades ago, the panda has been pulled back from the brink through something unfashionable in our era—long-term critical thinking. It wasn't flashy. Habitat restoration, breeding programs, and sustained international cooperation worked. Not perfectly. Not quickly. But they worked. The panda’s recovery is a reminder that collapse is not inevitable and that human beings are capable of much more than destruction.

What if the wars cool instead of spread, not through grand utopian breakthroughs but through journeyman diplomacy, rebalanced trade, and a renewed sense of global goodwill? What if inflation stays tame, wages keep inching up, and ordinary families finally feel a little financial breathing room?

What if medical science quietly delivers another leap forward—better cancer treatments, earlier detection, smarter vaccines—without the panic or politicization? What if AI becomes less about hype and fear and more about productivity, efficiency, and freeing human beings to do more meaningful work?

What if institutions begin, slowly and imperfectly, to regain credibility by telling the truth more often? And what if people, worn out by chaos, rediscover limits, community, and responsibility?

The best futures rarely arrive with fireworks. They arrive when catastrophe is avoided, stability returns, and life feels a little more normal again. In 2026, that alone would be a minor miracle—and a major victory.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)