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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteNo: the world is not predicted to end on Friday, November 13, 2026. The date comes from a 1960 population-growth equation whose curve approaches infinity at a finite point—a mathematical singularity, not a forecast of a sudden catastrophe. The paper’s authors used that alarming result to warn that accelerating population growth could not continue indefinitely.
What the 1960 paper said
Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora, and Lawrence W. Amiot published “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026” in Science on November 4, 1960. The authors, electrical engineering staff at the University of Illinois, were exploring a theoretical possibility: while many population models assume that crowding increases competition and slows growth, communication and coalition-building might let people cooperate more effectively as population grows—and thereby accelerate growth.
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They applied this idea to the world population, which they considered less affected by local migration and fluctuations than a particular region’s total. The paper’s famous line—“our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death. They will be squeezed to death”—is its stark statement of the consequences the authors associated with unchecked acceleration.
How the date was calculated
The authors assembled 24 estimates of world population, spanning roughly 100 generations from the time of Christ through 1958. After checking the estimates for independence, they used least squares to fit the parameters of their model. The fitted singularity date was A.D. 2026.87 ± 5.50 years, with an approximately 7 percent root-mean-square deviation across the data points. These figures are reported in the original paper in Science.
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The 7 percent figure describes how closely the fitted curve tracked those historical estimates; it is not a 7 percent margin of error for a real-world doomsday prediction. Nor is the date a measured countdown. It is the point produced by extending a curve fitted to past data under the model’s assumptions.
What “doomsday” means here
A singularity is a point at which the model’s formula makes population tend toward infinity as time approaches a finite date. That is a mathematical implication of continuing the chosen curve, not a physically plausible claim that Earth could hold infinitely many people. Finite resources and other constraints would change population dynamics well before then.
A 1960 TIME account of the paper made the distinction explicit: it said von Foerster did not literally believe humans would breed themselves to “universe-filling infinity” by 2026. The date made the danger of indefinitely accelerating growth vivid; it did not identify an asteroid, war, or other sudden event that would end the world.
Why the warning was not a literal forecast
The result depended on the selected model, the historical estimates available to the authors, and the assumption that the fitted trend would continue. A later peer-reviewed commentary in PNAS describes the original critical time as around 2027 and explains that a singularity signals a need for different dynamics—such as population decline—not actual infinity. A curve can fit past observations and still fail as a literal forecast if its underlying trend or mechanism changes. See Kaack and Katul’s 2013 commentary.
A September 30, 2026 retrospective by historian Alan MacEachern, republished by Phys.org from The Conversation, reports that world population began falling behind the model’s forecasts around 1993. MacEachern also reports that the global birth rate is slightly less than half its 1960 level, citing Our World in Data. That comparison is MacEachern’s report; it is not independently established here from the underlying series. The retrospective is available at Phys.org.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the authors proposed in 1960
Rather than wait for an external limit, von Foerster and colleagues argued that people could take control of population dynamics. Given their assumptions and the conditions of their time, they said stabilization would require cutting the birth rate to about half its value or reducing the average family size to a little above two children. This was their historical argument, not current demographic or policy guidance.
The useful lesson in the “Doomsday” date
The paper remains a memorable example of the difference between extrapolation and prediction. Its equation showed what would follow if a particular accelerating-growth curve continued; it did not establish that the curve would keep describing the world. The exact Friday-the-13th date made the warning striking, but the claim was always about a model’s mathematical limit, not a scheduled end to human life.
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