In 1960, Science published November 13 doomsday date predicted by Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot. Their paper said human numbers would approach infinity on November 13, 2026, a date they tied to effective self-annihilation.
They built that forecast from 24 estimates of world population spanning 2,000 years. In the paper, von Foerster wrote: "Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve" and "They will be squeezed to death."
Science and Heinz von Foerster
Von Foerster was an Austrian-American professor and cybernetics expert, and the 1960 paper gave the prediction a formal mathematical frame. The authors argued that human growth could move beyond a steady exponential path and into a faster one, then projected those historical figures forward to 2026. The conclusion was blunt: people should work together to reduce the global birth rate by half.
The paper drew immediate attention. Stories appeared in Time and, and the prediction became the subject of a series of Pogo comic strips. For readers today, the value is in the method as much as the date: the paper did not guess at random, but stitched together a long population record and extended it into the future.
Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot
Mora and Amiot coauthored the article with von Foerster, and the work did not stay in print quietly. Science published letters from mathematicians and demographers attacking it as ridiculous and manifestly absurd, while the authors answered with spirited defenses that doubled down on the math and the conclusion. That back-and-forth kept the prediction in circulation well beyond the original issue.
The forecast also had a long run of apparent support. Its projections looked remarkably accurate until around 1993, when global population began falling behind them. By then, the paper had already become a durable reference point for public debate about population growth, and its later miss made the original calculation easier to revisit than to ignore.
November 13, 2026
The date itself now sits in the future, but the paper’s meaning is already historical. The source says today’s global birth rate is slightly less than half what it was in 1960, which leaves the old half-rate warning as a rough comparison point rather than a living policy prescription. Readers who come to the paper now are looking at a forecast that once sounded close to science fiction and is now measured against what actually happened.
For anyone checking the original claim, the key question is no longer whether the date arrived. It is how a 1960 population model built from 24 estimates and 2,000 years of data could stay persuasive for decades, even after the world’s population path slipped away from it.
