A great headline? Or is it just typical, and obviously misleading, clickbait? And when have scientists, and not predictable cult leaders, End Times preachers or just random charlatans ever made such a claim, beyond calculating when our ageing sun will destroy life on Earth?

Actually scientists did calculate that the world would end on Friday 13th November 2026. Yet, as the original prediction is 66 years old, we can rule out intentional “clickbait” as the motive. Perhaps the editors of Science, wherein the prediction was published, wanted to increase sales and had plotted that a quick page turner would do just that. Well no. There was an actual hypothesis and ample mathematical backing with thousands of years of civilisation cited to solidify the claim.

Is it today’s failure of Microsoft Outlook, 365 or Teams that points the way to our doom? Or Gmail failing to synch’ with the above that truly opens the abyss? Perhaps it’s AI lurking throughout global communications, or some buffoon reaching for the Big Red Button? Well, again no. In fact, in the spirit of something ending, it turns out that the means by which our demise was predicted, itself disappeared some time ago.

It all began in 1960 dear reader when Science published Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. Heinz von Foerster who was an Austrian-American cybernetics expert and two of his students postulated that human populations may grow well past an exponential rate, until in 2026 the population growth rate would be infinity. On 13 November we wouldn’t die of starvation, or battles for parking spaces. Nay dear reader. Humanity would be “squeezed to death”. The authors cited 24 examples from the past 2,000 years to confirm human growth typically exceeds expectations. By projecting this rate into the future it was concluded growth rate would reach infinity. However, they also noted:

Thankfully, the same capacity for collaboration that assisted our species’ development throughout history could now avert this catastrophe. Since we are unlikely to want to reduce our life spans, they concluded, we should work together to reduce the global birth rate by half.

In 1960 population growth was eyed suspiciously, particularly as the idea of exploding populations outpacing city planning is more easily entertained than our ability to provide food, health care, accomodation and education at a matching pace. Nonetheless, many saw the paper as a tongue in cheek comment on the fear of population growth and it was the subject of many letters to the editor criticising methodology and conclusions as “manifestly absurd”. Still, the article provoked coverage in The New York Times and Time magazine.

It can’t be ignored that the lead author’s birthday was 13th November and he had also spent time as a stage magician. Yet the “doomsday equation” was cited up until the 1980s in textbooks on demography, genetics and ecology. In 1963 a Canadian Parliamentary Committee witness cited it as evidence chemical pesticides were required to feed the coming population. In 1971 it was cited in a case prior to Roe v. Wade as to why the government need not favour increasing population.

Over the 1970s and 1980s, the prediction equation turned out to be more accurate than other methods applied by demographers. This alone helped the notion to persist. Nonetheless, by 1993 its accuracy became increasingly error prone, as world population fell behind the “doomsday” forecasts. Today global birth rate is around half of what it was in 1960.

Did humanity take von Foerster’s advice and find a way to “work together to reduce the global birth rate by half”?

Further material

• Doomsday: Friday 13th November 2026 – Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora, Lawrence W. Amiot [PDF]
• AUDIO: ABC interview with Alan MacEachern, a history professor at Western University in Canada.
• THE CONVERSATION: Scientists predicted ‘Friday 13 November 2026’ would be ‘doomsday.’ Should you be worried?