Published : 01 Oct 2026, 10:29 PM
Updated : 01 Oct 2026, 10:29 PM
A 1960 paper in the journal Science that predicted human population would approach infinity on Nov 13, 2026, is back in focus as the date draws near.
Titled "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026", it was written by Austrian-American cybernetics expert Heinz von Foerster and two of his students, Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot.
They argued that humans, unlike other species, can cooperate to solve problems, so more people could mean faster growth, not slower. Their warning was that future generations would be "squeezed to death", according to The Independent.
Using 24 estimates of world population across 2,000 years, they projected the trend forward and found that numbers would be near infinity in 2026.
The claim made headlines in Time and The New York Times, and even inspired Pogo comic strips. Mathematicians and demographers attacked it in Science's letters pages, but the authors stood by their sums.
Its forecasts then proved eerily accurate.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, the equation beat most demographers' projections, and it turned up in textbooks, a 1963 Canadian parliamentary committee, and a 1971 US Supreme Court abortion case, reports The Independent.
The forecast began to fail around 1993, when population growth started falling behind the curve.
The paper had urged the world to halve its birth rate, and the global rate today is slightly less than half the 1960 level.
Von Foerster was once a stage magician, and the piece's lesson is that the paper followed the structure of an illusion: a setup, an extraordinary turn, and a reveal that restores normality.
