A widely cited scientific prediction that humanity would collapse under its own population growth by November 13, 2026, is about to expire quietly, with no sign of the apocalypse it forecast.
The prediction came from Heinz von Foerster, a physicist at the University of Illinois, who co-authored a 1960 paper in the journal Science modeling human population growth. Rather than predicting famine, the fear that had dominated population thinking since English economist Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), von Foerster argued humanity would instead be “squeezed to death” as population growth accelerated toward what he treated as an approach to infinity.
“Our great—great—grandchildren will not starve to death,” von Foerster and his co-authors wrote. “They will be squeezed to death.” Their model pointed to the fall of 2026 as the moment this process would reach its breaking point.
What actually happened to population growth
The world’s population has indeed grown substantially since 1960, rising from about 3 billion people then to roughly 8.3 billion today. But the rate of growth that alarmed von Foerster has been slowing for decades rather than accelerating toward the infinite trajectory his model assumed.
Demographers now expect global population to peak at around 10 billion later this century or in the next before beginning to decline. Birthrates in much of the Western world and parts of Asia have already fallen below the replacement rate, raising concerns in some countries about shrinking, aging populations rather than runaway growth.
Malthus’s famine predictions also failed to materialize, as agricultural advances allowed food production to keep pace with population growth for far longer than his original model suggested was possible.
A 1960s fear revisited
Von Foerster’s paper emerged during a period of significant global anxiety. The Cold War arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was intensifying only 15 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Baby Boom was driving rapid population increases not just in the United States but in many parts of the world.
Von Foerster was not a demographer by training, and his model has not held up against the actual trajectory of global population trends in the decades since. Concerns about doomsday scenarios have resurfaced more recently in connection with debates over artificial intelligence, though those discussions are unrelated to von Foerster’s 1960 population forecast.
With the November 13 date approaching, there is no scientific indication that it will bring any disruption to daily life.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login