Scientific doomsday prediction for 2026 fails as birth rates decline

In 1960, the journal Science published a controversial article titled ‘Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026’. The paper, authored by cybernetics expert Heinz von Foerster and his students Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot, predicted that human population growth would accelerate beyond an exponential rate, eventually approaching infinity and leading to human self-annihilation.

The authors argued that human populations are exceptional and might grow at an ever-increasing rate rather than being checked by resource scarcity. While the mathematical models appeared accurate for several decades, the predictions began to diverge from reality around 1993.

As of today, the global birth rate has fallen to less than half of what it was in 1960, causing the actual population numbers to fall significantly behind the original forecasts.