Society & Frontier risk-off · 3–10 years
A what‑if from the future

What if an antibiotic-resistant superbug overwhelms hospitals?

An AMR superbug outbreak trades as a demand shock: mobility collapse destroys oil demand (WTI, distillates, energy majors) while gold bids on safe-haven plus expected policy easing. Rhymes with the Mar-2020 COVID demand wipeout and the Nov-2021 Omicron Black-Friday crude selloff. Skeptic's distinction: a bacterial-resistance crisis is slower-moving and more localized to healthcare systems than an airborne pandemic, so the oil-demand hit is likely milder than COVID - the cleaner trade is long hospital/antibiotic-developer names and gold, not a wholesale short of crude.

13%
our model probability
over 3–10 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 13% · 90% range 5–21% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 3–10 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. An antibiotic-resistant superbug outbreak threatens hospitals and global health. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Pandemic shock ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.