‘Doomsday: Friday, November 13, 2026’: Why a 1960 Science journal paper predicted humanity would be ‘squeezed to death’

One of the world’s leading science journals, Science, published an article in 1960 with a startling title for tomorrow: “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026.” It outlandishly predicted that people on this planet would be “squeezed to death” on that day.

The authors of the paper, Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian-American professor and cybernetics expert, and two of his students, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amio, argued that human populations might grow so beyond an exponential rate that “our great-great-grandchildren will not starve,” instead, “they will be squeezed to death.”

But since the paper's publication, discussion of it has been volatile, big publishers like The New York Times wrote about it with the title “PHYSICIST OFFERS A DOOMSDAY DATE; Says Population Bulge Will Cause the End on Friday, Nov. 13th, in 2026 A.D.”

Finite Earth can’t sustain infinite population growth

Like Von Foerster, other authors also reached similar conclusions that an ever-increasing population will bring doomsday to Earth. Paul Ehrlich, an American biologist and environmentalist, with input from his wife, wrote his 1968 bestselling book The Population Bomb. It argued that a finite planet cannot support infinite population growth and predicted mass famine.

In 1972, the book The Limits to Growth, written by Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens II, was based on a computer model that predicted the systemic collapse of society by the 2020s as a growing population exhausted the planet’s resources.

Governments panicked with The Doomsday prediction of an uncontrollable population

All of these predictions turned out to be wrong, but not before scaring up the governments to take extreme measures to control the population. One of the largest hotspots of population; South Asia, started a mass sterilization program in the 70’ and China started its infamous one-child policy in 1980 to prevent an impending population bomb. But the tables have turned, as now countries like Japan, Hungary, Turkey, and even China are encouraging couples to have more children.

Although humanity survived every doomsday prediction, but Mark Woolhouse, the Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, believes it should not be taken as merely a harmless relic.

While others view the failed model with amusement, Woolhouse explicitly states in his article in the Independent that “some regard the doomsday paper as a historical curiosity to be regarded with indulgence. I disagree. I see it as a cautionary tale that undermines confidence in scientific predictions of all kinds.”

Because of that eroded trust, he insists that past failures must prompt deeper skepticism toward contemporary alarms: “It should be cause to reflect on the merits of today’s prophecies of disaster.”

Should we worry about November 13, 2026?

For over 30 years, their predictions have been mostly accurate regarding a population increase, but there is no need to worry about November 13, 2026. Around 1993, the study’s findings became questionable when the global population began falling behind its forecasts. “Hopefully, we will all wake up on Nov. 13 to an ordinary day,” Alan MacEachern, a history professor at Western University, wrote in the conversation last month.

He cited Our World in Data, which reports that the global birth rate today is slightly less than half what it was in 1960, so the population bomb is not the direst thing we should be worrying about right now.

But “prepping for the next doomsday scenario - it is worth asking what we can learn from this one,” he argued in the article. The lesson for him is in “how we present our beliefs to the world,” just like Von Foerster caught the world’s attention by absurdity.