In November 1960, Austrian-American physicist Heinz von Foerster and two colleagues at the University of Illinois published a short paper in the journal Science. Titled “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026,” it fitted historical world-population estimates to a mathematical curve.
The model showed population growing faster than exponential, a pattern called hyperbolic growth. The equation pointed to a point around 2026.87 where the numbers would race toward infinity.
The authors chose Friday the 13th in November (also von Foerster’s birthday) as the symbolic date. Their memorable line: “Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve. They will be squeezed to death.”
Why the prediction failed
The paper assumed the accelerating growth trend of the previous two millennia would continue forever. It did not. Global birth rates have fallen sharply. By the early 1990s, actual population numbers began lagging behind the 1960 curve.
Today the worldwide birth rate is roughly half its 1960 level. United Nations projections now expect the human population to peak around 10.3 billion in the 2080s and then slowly decline.
What it really meant
The study was never a literal forecast of apocalypse by overcrowding. It was a dramatic mathematical warning that unchecked acceleration could not continue.
Demographers and mathematicians criticized the method at the time and later data proved them right. November 13, 2026, will simply be another Friday, not the end of the world.
