Large-scale societal threats, such as the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, are leading to the rupture of continuity between humans' usual expectations and the reality that became suddenly unpredictable and uncertain. The SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the Coronavirus disease remains invisible to laymen and these extraordinary circumstances tend to elicit a range of adaptative responses that allow laymen's adjustment to the collective upheaval. The methodology of the current research has been adapted from qualitative field studies conducted in irradiated areas of Chernobyl in Ukraine where Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant reactor exploded on April 26, 1986. An analogy between invisible radioactive contaminations with caesium-137 and invisible biological contaminations with SARS-CoV-2 virus highlights laymen's need to construct the meaning of an unprecedent situation, cope with uncertainty and negative emotions, and project themselves towards a promising future. The participants (N = 784) were asked to write an online essay about their ideas and feelings on the topic "Me: yesterday, today and tomorrow" describing their daily trajectories during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020. The main results demonstrated that laymen express primarily a need for positive change in their lives when the COVID-19 pandemic will end. These results that are tainted by laymen's hope in promising future in uncertain times during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown highlight the complementarity of global emotional orientations of fear and hope that transcend our societies