Rehearsing the Unthinkable: Jane McGonigal's Social Simulations of Strange Futures

The first scenario is set in 2033. Extreme heat, wildfires, and droughts have turned out worse than even the most dire climate predictions, and geoengineering is now up for a global vote. Nine billion people are eligible to vote yes or no on a 10-year plan of aggressive solar radiation management. The plan would inject sulfate particles into the atmosphere to block some of the sun's rays. The election is called "Sun Exit." Some say a yes vote could lead to a 10-year winter. It could also solve some of the biggest climate challenges.

McGonigal asks the audience a series of questions. Is it worth the risks and unintended consequences? How would you vote? How would you educate yourself to be ready to vote?

She then updates the scenario. Sun Exit has passed, and solar radiation management begins in 10 days. How do you feel now, and what do you do in those 10 days to prepare? She jumps forward one more year. The geoengineering is working, but trust in science is at an all-time low. People are reporting mental and physical side effects, and the listener has to decide whether that is misinformation. The question becomes what you would do to keep yourself healthy. The scenario unfolds in stages, so participants have to keep revising their reactions as the world changes around them.

The second future is set in 2029. In this world, the federal government has become a "full-blown zero waste authoritarian" state. It is now illegal to throw anything away, and the government has literally taken away people's trash cans. Composting is still allowed, but recycling "never worked," and no one is permitted to create any garbage at all.

McGonigal adds what she calls some good news. Psychologists have invented a new word for the positive emotion that defines life in this zero-waste society, rendered in the talk as "zerophoria." She describes it as a combination of pride, joy, and resourcefulness: a lightness of being that comes from wasting nothing and leaving no trace behind.

She then asks the audience to choose a response. Do they adopt new habits and help others? Do they rise up and join a resistance movement? Or do they become reformers who propose ways to make the zero-waste society better? The scenario is uncomfortable on purpose. It mixes coercion with possible benefits, so no single reaction is obviously correct.

The third future is set in 2031. Climate migration is rising, and countries with low fertility rates are competing with one another for immigrants. They are building climate-resilient "welcome cities" and paying people to move there. McGonigal describes this as part of a new geopolitical movement called the Welcome Party. In the scenario, up to 1 billion people are expected to relocate with assistance over the next decade.

In this future, the listener is asked to take a survey of personal climate risk and intention to migrate. The Welcome Party is collecting the data to simulate and plan a safe and equitable mass climate migration. The survey requires naming three climate-resilient cities you would be willing to move to with social and economic support. McGonigal asks which three cities the audience would name. She also asks a second, more reflective question: how ready do they feel to even consider it?

Next, McGonigal explains the purpose of the exercise. She shows two graphs tracking how often the words "unimaginable" and "unthinkable" appear in journalism. She describes the surge as exponential and interprets it as evidence that "we are increasingly shocked and blindsided by how the future unfolds."

That concern is why she leads an online community called Urgent Optimists for the nonprofit Institute for the Future. There she runs monthly "social simulations" of otherwise unthinkable events. Hundreds of team members gather online to write and share journal entries. The entries describe, in vivid detail, how each person would feel and what they would do to help themselves and others if they woke up in one of these strange new worlds. The three scenarios in the talk follow the same format as those simulations.

McGonigal says the goal is to move every participant's score up by at least one point on three measures of what she calls future imagination.

The first measure is mental flexibility. On a scale of 1 to 10, how plausible or realistic does the scenario seem to you? In other words, is this future thinkable to you?

The second is realistic hope. How worried or excited would you be to wake up in this future? She wants participants to be able to anticipate risks, and also to see opportunities for positive transformation.

The third is future power. How ready do you feel to help yourself and others if you woke up in this future? McGonigal reports that this is the number her team sees rise the most after a social simulation.

McGonigal ends by inviting listeners to join a social simulation team someday and play with these possibilities. Her stated aim is to help build a society that can confidently say, "for us there are no unthinkable futures, there are no futures we refuse to imagine."