Judgment Day: Friday, November 13, 2026 / Should We Be Worried?

In 1960, Science, one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, published an article with a blunt, unambiguous title: 'Judgment Day: Friday, November 13, 2026.' The article predicted that on that future date, just over a month away, the human population would approach infinity and effectively destroy itself.

For decades, a doomsday equation predicted population growth better than most experts, until declining birth rates called into question its prediction of a 2026 catastrophe.

In 1960, Science magazine, one of the most prestigious scientific magazines in the world, published an article with a clear and unambiguous title: "Doomsday: Friday, November 13, 2026". This article predicted that at that future date, which is just over a month from today, the human population will approach infinity and practically destroy itself.

The strangeness of this claim caused the article to be widely noticed by the public. The more surprising thing is that since the underlying research and calculations seemed valid and accurate, this article also attracted the attention of the scientific community.

The authors of the article, Heinz von Forster, an Austrian-American professor and expert in cybernetics, along with two of his students, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amyot argued that the human population is in an exceptional situation and may grow at a rate beyond exponential growth, that is, with increasing acceleration.

They reasoned: "The descendants of our descendants will not die of hunger; Rather, due to the excessive population density, they will be crushed and die."

The paper was cited many times and its predictions seemed remarkably accurate; Until around 1993, half way to the predicted "doomsday", the growth of the world population fell behind the predicted figures.

Today, the global birth rate is slightly less than half of what it was in 1960. Hopefully, we all start our mornings on November 13 with a normal day. However, this paper remains an outstanding example of combining exact science with the art of staging to great effect.

Unique human abilities

The middle of the 20th century saw an increase in societal concerns about global population growth and its potential to create resource shortages and geopolitical conflicts. The root of many of these concerns was the implicit or explicit acceptance of Malthus' idea; An idea that said that although the population has the potential to grow exponentially, it is always limited and controlled by the capacity to provide food.

However, von Forster and colleagues argued in their paper that humans may be an exception when it comes to population. Given our ability to communicate and form "coalitions" that help solve our problems, increased population density may simply mean more opportunities for cooperation; In such a way that our population grows not only at an exponential rate, but also at an increasing speed.

Then, using 24 estimates of the world's population over the past 2000 years, they showed that the number of humans has actually always exceeded expectations. All these materials were presented in a scientific and measured text format and based on complex and intensive mathematical equations.

Von Foerster and his colleagues then extrapolated this historical statistic into the future and calculated that our population would approach infinity in 2026 due to continued growth.

Fortunately, the same ability to cooperate that has helped mankind progress throughout history can now prevent this catastrophe from occurring. They came to the conclusion that it is unlikely that we will reduce our life expectancy, we must work together to reduce the global birth rate by half.

The publication of this article immediately became controversial. Reports were published in "Time" magazine and "New York Times" newspaper about it. This became the basis for a series of Pogo comic strips, and many pundits saw the article as merely a satirical commentary on population concerns.

But the incident was not only not forgotten, but an interesting thing happened. When the journal "Science" published letters from mathematicians and demographers criticizing the work of von Forster and his colleagues, calling it "ridiculous" and "clearly nonsensical," the authors responded with impassioned defenses, emphasizing and insisting on the mathematical foundations and results.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, that doomsday equation was regularly, and usually unquestioningly, invoked as an established fact in genetics, ecology, and demography textbooks.

This equation was brought up in more strange places. For example, in 1963 at a committee of the Canadian Parliament, a witness from the chemical industry cited it as a reason for the necessity of using chemical pesticides: providing food for an exploding population. Also in 1971, in a US Supreme Court abortion case (which was the forerunner of the famous Roe v. Wade case), this equation was cited as an argument showing that there was no compelling reason for the government to support population growth.

The "doomsday" idea persisted because its predictions about the future population turned out to be very accurate, at least for a while. During the 1970s and 1980s, its original equation provided estimates that were more accurate than most demographers predicted.

It wasn't until around 1993 that accuracy began to decline and the world's population fell behind projections; Because the world began to do what von Forster and his colleagues had recommended. Today, the global birth rate is slightly less than half of what it was in 1960.

We're probably not all going to wake up on Friday morning, November 13, "squeezed to death." But before we simply skip over this story and prepare ourselves for the next apocalyptic scenario, it is worth asking what we can learn from this experience.

I think the lesson of the story lies in the way we present our beliefs to the world. Heinz von Forster was once a magician in his life. Borrowing from the classic terminology of staging techniques, an effective conjurer is based on three pillars: an introduction, a surprise twist, and a final reveal that brings the situation back to normal.

The article of Von Foerster and his colleagues was noticed because, in the inside, it was an ordinary scientific article that was presented under the cover of an extraordinary title and a surprising conclusion; And it maintained its importance, because it had a firm root in research and reasoning.

drawing the world's attention to a serious issue by resorting to something unusual and strange; This is a clever trick.