The article addresses the long-term patterns of societal change. In particular, it considers how certain high-impact, surprising events ("X-events") can change existing trends and thus give rise to a future that does not follow the "business-as-usual" default trend-following scenario. We look at the case of Kondratieff waves ("K-waves"), those socio-economic cycles by which dynamical societal patterns are often detected in futures studies. We postulate four hypothetical X-events and how they might fundamentally change the existing trend and thus take us to a very different kind of future. Finally, we recommend a set of principles through which organisations and countries can follow to deal with X-events should they occur. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc.