Today, (Friday, Nov. 13, 2026) is “doomsday,” according to a scientific paper published around 66 years ago in the Science journal. That paper predicted that, at this point, the “human population will approach infinity,” though they specified that would happen “if it grows as it has grown in the last two millennia [sic].”
Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian-American professor and cybernetics expert, penned the paper along with two of his students, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot. They argued that the human population would grow at an exponential rate, effectively leading to future generations being “squeezed to death.”
“The outlandishness of the claim landed the article widespread public attention,” said The Conversation in an article last month. “More surprisingly – because its underlying research and math seemed sound – it also received careful and sustained scientific attention.”
It noted that it was even cited in a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court abortion case leading up to Roe v. Wade to highlight the concern of an ever-increasing population. Per The Conversation, the research was actually regularly cited until around 1993, when global populations began falling.
As of 2024, the global fertility rate was 2.2 births per woman on average, down from around 5 in the 1960s and 3.3 in 1990, according to the United Nations. In the U.S., fertility rates dropped to a record low last year.
However, doomsday is still on our minds these days, albeit for different reasons. There’s the Doomsday Clock from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that’s gotten closer to the “midnight” scenario of nuclear war in recent years due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and war in the Middle East. This year, new concerns have also popped up about the growth of artificial intelligence.
Jacob Coxon, an employee in the AI industry, said in an X post earlier this year that the technology could “kill us all by the end of the decade.”
For now, it seems that humanity will survive past the end of today. We might even make it long enough to see “Avengers: Doomsday” in theaters on Dec. 18.
