Not happening today: Nov 13, 2026, was predicted to be 'mathematical doomsday'

It is Friday the 13th, a day one scientist predicted 66 years ago would be the end of humanity. Physicist Heinz von Foerster wrote in Science magazine in 1960, "Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve. They will be squeezed to death." Incidentally, it is his birth anniversary today. Foerster had proposed this date to explain how, by this time, 66 years later, there will be no place left for humans on Earth. The human population will grow to such an extent that everyone will be squeezed to death.

"When the number of 'people' goes to infinity, and the clever population annihilates itself...The most likely date for it is Friday, Nov. 13, A.D. 2026," the physicist said. He did not predict it like a psychic, but made calculations based on how the world's population grew over 2,000 years.

Mathematical “doomsday” on Friday the 13th

Using historical data from 400 BCE until 1958, he theorised how much the population would grow in the coming decades. He pointed out in the paper titled Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, AD 2026, that the world's population doubled over a few centuries. Slowly, this gap started to become smaller, which he said would keep closing in. He said that by 2020, the global population would reach 25 billion. One day, it would reach a point where this interval would become zero, and humanity would reach "an impossible mathematical endpoint called Doomsday".

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He urged governments to take timely steps to ensure that the world does not reach this scenario. However, his paper was criticised for presenting an unrealistic scenario. Scientists said that he did not take into consideration the deaths and also the fact that it takes a baby nine months to be born. The rate of population growth also varies from country to country.

Today the world's population sits a little over 8 billion, way less than 25 billion that Foerster predicted. However, even if there is no actual doomsday happening on Nov 13, the world is slowly inching towards one, especially with climate change and the scare around AI.