The end of the world on November 13, 2026 canceled unborn children

In a scientific paper published 66 years ago, researchers predicted a “Judgment Day” on November 13, 2026. History professor Alan McEachern from the University of Western Ontario in Canada explained what it was all about.

The story of this prediction began on November 4, 1960, when the journal Science published an article with the provocative title “Judgment Day: Friday, November 13, 2026”. Cybernetic Heinz von Förster and his students built a mathematical model based on two thousand years of demographic data. The calculations showed a frightening trend: the population of the Earth will grow at an accelerating rate, and by this date it will theoretically rush to infinity. The main threat was not hunger, but the total overpopulation of the planet.

For a long time, this model seemed frighteningly accurate and even wandered through textbooks. However, since 1993, the reality has gone against the forecast. As Professor McEachern explains, the authors’ main mistake was that they could not foresee a global drop in fertility. Today, that figure is less than half the 1960 level, so the old mathematical extrapolation just doesn't work.

Moreover, Von Förster himself was fond of stage tricks and loved theatricality. The loud title of the article with an absurd conclusion was more a PR stunt to draw the attention of the world community to the real problem of overpopulation, and not a literal prediction of the physical death of the planet.