Everything will go south

“At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you.

Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is.

You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem… and you solve the next one… and then the next.

And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.” | Mark Watney, The Martian

While the consequences are generally not as existential as they are in the story, the arc is relevant in every attempt to solve a hard problem.