Filmmaker asked people in 2016 to predict the world 10 years later. One warned of a 'major world flu epidemic'
The real reason Sam Baron asked his friends the question was that he believed 2016 was the 'beginning of the end'
Nobody can actually predict the future, but sometimes, just sometimes, people's guesses can be pretty accurate. Sam Baron, a filmmaker, began recording a documentary in 2016. His mom had just passed away, and with her, all hope left him. With endless bad things happening in the world, he couldn't see a future, so he turned to his friends and family to hear what they thought the world would look like 10 years from 2016. In 2026, Baron went through the footage, and some of their answers truly surprised him. The video was shared on October 15, 2026, and it has since reached 647,700 views, over 20,000 likes, and 1,152 comments.
'Beginning of the end'
When Baron asked his friends and family to predict the future 10 years later, he assumed they would come up with funny answers that would turn out to be terribly wrong, making them hilarious to look back on. But the real reason he asked them was that he believed 2016 was the "beginning of the end" due to his mother passing. That was when he started working on his documentary "Everything Will Be Totally Fine."
Eerie guesses
As expected, Baron's friends and family had some hilarious responses. Some said people would be able to talk to their toasters. One predicted that people would have 3D printers that could print chocolate cakes and toilet rolls. A young man explained the Zika virus outbreak and said something similar would happen all over the world, and that if it was "fast enough," everyone could perish. While many of the predictions didn't come true, a few accurate guesses included the Oasis getting back together and the Queen dying. One of them was by an older friend, who, like a "psychic," predicted that there was a high chance of another "major world flu epidemic."
Surprisingly, in 2020, the "bad thing happened." People around the world were on lockdown. Baron felt the same hopelessness again, but he turned to his family and friends. Even though they were not physically there for each other, they kept in touch and kept each other sane. In 2026, Baron admitted, "This isn't the future I'd imagine, but here we are. My mom will never get to meet her grandchild. Bad things are still happening and will keep happening, and good things will happen too. It feels...not that terrifying, to be honest with you. I'm going to be a father in eight months' time, and it feels okay."
Scientific intuition
Baron's friends were not the only ones who predicted a pandemic. Years before COVID-19 took over the globe, Bill Gates predicted something similar five years before the pandemic broke out. During a 2015 TED Talk, Gates said, "If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war...We’re not ready for the next epidemic." And he was right. The entire world stopped in 2020.
Everyone had to stay inside their houses; 7,010,681 people died, and the economy tanked. Other people who predicted the pandemic were scientist Vaclav Smil, who wrote about it in his 2008 book "Global Catastrophes and Trends," and Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert, who had warned people about the pandemic since his 2016 book "Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs."
'Rosy retrospection'
People were drawn to various parts of Baron's video. Some noted how he was still friends with everyone. A few congratulated him on the baby, while others pointed out the nostalgia oozing from his video. @greaterglider commented, "Interesting how you can see the struggles you talked about in 2016, yet now there is a viral nostalgia for it. Rosy retrospection in action." @Porkarific wrote, "The range of emotions that you made me feel in 15 minutes was unlike anything I've seen before. A beautiful film."
You can follow Sam Baron (@sambaron) on YouTube for more film content.
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