A worst-case scenario is a cliché that refers to:
- the worse possible future outcome.
(McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms)
Though the meaning is quite intuitive, the expression in its fixed form has become increasingly popular from the mid 70's as shown in Ngram.
The expression is very common in financial markets, where it is often used by stock markets analysts to refer to their most negative forcasts:
- A stock-market crash of ~50% from the peak would not be a surprise. It would also not be the "worst-case scenario," by any means. The "worst-case scenario," which has actually been a common scenario over history, is that stocks would drop by, say 75% peak to trough. (uk.businessinsider.com)
But it is also commonly used depicting possible future negative developments in geopolitics or climate issues:
- Given the good performance of the rains in 2005, a worst case scenario was highly unlikely, in terms of food security. (Famine: Early Warning Systems…)
Question:
1) What made this expression a common one? Was it used by a politician or a well-known journalist in some famous speech or article that made it popular?
2) Was it originally a typical financial jargon expression or was it from some other field (politics, science etc.)?
Edit:
This related question does not address my specific request.
Best Answer
'Scenario' and 'worst-case' in Merriam-Webster dictionaries
"Worst-case scenario" pretty clearly arose from the cobbling together of two terms that already existed in English: the noun scenario—which Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) dates to 1875 in the sense of "an outline or synopsis of a play," but which seems not to have acquired the sense of "an account or synopsis of a possible course of action or events" until much later—and the adjective worst-case, which the Eleventh Collegiate dates to 1964:
In fact, the "account or synopsis of a possible course of action or events" sense of scenario debuts in the Eighth Collegiate (1973), and the entry for worst-case first appears in the Ninth Collegiate (1983), suggesting that the new sense of scenario gained mainstream acceptance before the modifier worst-case did. This comports with my memory: I vividly recall first encountering scenario when I was in high school in Calgary, Alberta, in 1970–1971, in news reports noting that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had recently discovered the word and was now using it constantly to describe hypothetical situations and outcomes.
An early relevant match for 'scenario'
Scenario as "hypothetical setting" goes much farther back than 1973, however. From U.S. Department of the Army, Field Manual FM 21-5: Military Training (1957):
Early relevant matches for 'worst-case'
As for worst-case as an adjective, Google Books searches find early instances of it in such phrases as "worst-case error" (going back to at least 1961), "worst-case analysis" (going back to at least 1961, as well), and "worst-case projection" (going back top at least 1971).
(I've tried to be cautious in identifying "confirmed" dates" for Google Books matches. The vast majority of matches Google Books returns for the searches I ran are snippet views that do not provide access to a publication date in the snippet window—and many are from multiple-year volumes of a periodical, making it extremely difficult to pin down a particular year as the publication date of the snippet shown.)
Earliest definite Google Books matches for 'worst-case scenario'
The earliest confirmable Google Books match that I could find for "worst-case scenario" is from Michael Kramer, "The City Politic," in New York Magazine (November 25, 1974):
The next-earliest matches are from 1975. From John Albers, Walter Bawiec & Lawrence Rooney, "Demand for Nonfuel Minerals and Materials by the United States Energy Industry, 1975–1990" (1975), a U.S. Geological Survey professional paper:
And from "Fiscal Year 1976 and July-September 1976 Transition Period Authorization for Military Procurement, Research and Development, and Active Duty, Selected Reserve, and Civilian Personnel Strengths: Hearing Before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, First Session" (1975) [combined snippets]:
Conclusions
The most striking thing about the earliest instances of "worst-case scenario" in Google Books searches is that they are all closely connected to U.S. government research—appearing either in pure research papers by scientists working for government agencies (like the U.S. Geological Survey) or in testimony taken at hearings before governmental committees.
Even the earliest clear use of scenario as a hypothetical situation to be used as the basis for real-world activity—the U.S. Army's 1957 Military Training field manual—is a U.S. government undertaking. Whether the earliest instance of "worst-case scenario" arose in the subcategory of military planning (as I think is most likely), energy resource planning, or some other branch of government, the connection to government is direct and obvious.
My working conclusion is that the term became a buzzword/catchphrase in one particular area of the federal government apparatus in the United States (probably the Department of Defense), and spread from there to other departments and their concerns, to politicians and theirs, and thence into the private sector—to the business world and to everyone else.