1960 'Doomsday' Prediction for November 13, 2026, Undermined by Falling Birth Rates
In 1960, the scientific journal *Science* published an article titled 'Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026,' which predicted that the human population would approach infinity on that date, leading to self-annihilation. Authored by Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian-American professor and cybernetics expert, and his students Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot, the article argued that human populations could grow at an ever-increasing rate due to unique capacities for collaboration. Their projections, based on 24 estimates of world population over 2,000 years, suggested that human numbers consistently outpaced expectations. The article gained significant attention and its predictions remained remarkably accurate until around 1993. At that point, global population growth began to fall behind the forecast, primarily because the global birth rate started to decline. Today, the global birth rate is less than half of what it was in 1960, effectively averting the predicted catastrophe.
