This approach to organizing future possibilities was created by Charles W. Taylor, a strategic futurist with the U.S. Army War College. It is a theoretical process that can be used holistically to project trends and events and their consequences into the future and to generate alternative scenarios at predetermined points in time. The Cone of Plausibility encompasses theoretical projections of four planning scenarios, each having a dominant theme or driver, such as technology, politics, economics, and sociology. Each of these themes or drivers commands a vision or scenario of the future. Trends within each theme are affected by interactions among trends, in which dominant trends alter the less dominant ones or result in discontinuities. Outside of the cone are wildcard scenarios -- scenarios which, if they occurred, would overwhelm other scenarios or visions of the future. .
