1960 Doomsday study predicting November 13, 2026 end of the world, Digi Mart USA News: A scientific study that points to November 13, 2026 as the date of the end of the world has revived rumors of an impending apocalypse. However, the research, published in the journal Science in November 1960, was based on a mathematical model of world population growth whose conditions were not met, according to data from the United Nations (UN).
The paper, titled “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026,” was prepared by Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W.
Amiot, who calculated that the world population could reach infinite growth on that date.
“On this date, the human population will approach infinity if it continues to grow as it has during the last two millennia,” the study published in Science states.
“For obvious reasons, [that date] will be called ‘Doomsday,’ since it is when the population reaches infinity and that intelligent population annihilates itself.”
However, the growth of the world population has slowed, so the necessary condition for reaching the result of that formula was not met. According to the UN, the rate of demographic expansion reached a peak of roughly 2.3% annually in 1963, but fell to less than 1% in 2020.
The researchers analyzed 24 historical population estimates covering a period of approximately two thousand years.
From that data, they built a mathematical model suggesting the number of inhabitants could increase without limit.
“Our great-great-grandchildren will not die of hunger. They will be crushed.”
The phrase, translated from the original article, referred to an extreme scenario of overpopulation, not to the planet disappearing.
The scientists also noted that mechanisms would need to be found to stabilize the population and avoid problems related to available resources.
The UN’s official projections show a very different reality.
In its World Population Prospects 2024 report, the organization estimated that the world population would grow from 8.2 billion people in 2024 to a peak of roughly 10.3 billion around the mid-2080s.
After that point, a gradual decline is expected, reaching about 10.2 billion people in 2100.
“The global fertility rate [was] 2.3 live births per woman in 2024.”
This means the average number of children per woman has declined, a trend that helps explain why the population is not growing at the pace assumed in 1960.
Historian Alan MacEachern of Western University in Canada examined this research in an article published by The Conversation in September 2026.
According to his analysis, the formula offered results fairly close to reality for several decades, but around 1993 it began to lose accuracy, when the world population fell below its projections.
Meanwhile, mathematical biologist Joel Cohen, quoted by Deutsche Welle based on an interview with Popular Science, said of von Foerster: “He was right in his analysis just when that analysis stopped being valid.”
The change is linked to declining birth rates, urbanization, access to contraception and social transformations.
Neither the original study nor current demographic projections provide evidence that humanity will disappear on Friday, November 13, 2026.
The 1960 research is authentic, but its result depended on a trend that changed over time.
The case shows that a mathematical prediction is not the same as certainty, especially when its calculations depend on social conditions that can change.
