Some say our era is dominated by the war between the left and the right. But the real war right now is the war of the present against the future. 

While the surreal drama of the Marathon Bombing and the subsequent manhunt was going on last week, I was reading two books about the future.

I was expecting to be annoyed by Al Gore's book The Future, and to be energized by Byron Reese's Infinite Progress. But it didn't quite turn out that way.

March 4th... but not before doing some scenario planning.

Things that happened for which scenario planning was or might have been useful on this date in history.

537: Ostrogoths begin a siege of Rome. Belisarius almost gets caught outside the walls, but makes it inside in time to lead a successful long-term resistance to the siege (probably thanks to a primitive form of scenario planning).

Things that happened on March 1 through history with which scenario planning might have helped.

It's not what you don't know that gets you, it's what you don't do scenario planning for.

Some are born scenario planning; some achieve scenario planning; others have scenario planning thrust upon them by the Futures Strategy Group. We hope you will soon be among the latter.

Scenario planning is about imagining the improbable; here are some improbable things that happened on this date.

Every day something happens for which a lot of experts did not do scenario planning.