nuclear warfare, total war, and pandemics. The aim of a professional futurist would be to identify conditions that could lead to these events in order to create "pragmatically feasible roads to alternative futures." Academic programs and research centers Future of Humanity Institute The Future Society Future Studies Program www.futurestudiesprogram.com Houston Foresight Program, University of Houston Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies The Futures Academy, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland Institute for Futures Research, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa Institute for the Future, Palo Alto, California National Intelligence Council, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Washington, DC Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), Berkeley, California (Previously known as the Singularity Institute) The Millennium Project Tellus Institute, Boston, Massachusetts World Future Society World Futures Studies Federation Futurists Futurists are practitioners of the foresight profession, which seeks to provide organizations and individuals with images of the future to help them prepare for contingencies and to maximize opportunities. A foresight project begins with a question that ponders the future of any given subject area, including technology, medicine, government and business. Futurists engage in environmental scanning to search for drivers of change and emerging trends that may have an effect on the focus topic. The scanning process includes reviewing social media platforms, researching already prepared reports, engaging in Delphi studies, reading articles and any other sources of relevant information and preparing and analyzing data extrapolations. Then, through one of a number of highly structured methods futurists organize this information and use it to create multiple future scenarios for the topic, also known as a domain. The value of preparing many different versions of the future rather than a singular prediction is that they provide a client with the ability to prepare long-range plans that will weather and optimize a variety of contexts. Books APF's list of most significant futures works The Association for Professional Futurists recognizes the Most Significant Futures Works for the purpose of identifying and rewarding the work of foresight professionals and others whose work illuminates aspects of the future. Other notable foresight books "Four Futures: Life After Capitalism" by Peter Frase 2016 Teaching about the Future by Peter C. Bishop and Andy Hines Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now by Vincent Ialenti 2020 "The Fourth Industrial Revolution" by Klaus Schwab 2016 "Futuring: The Exploration of the Future" by Edward Cornish 2004 "Foresight Infused Strategy" by Maree Conway Physics of