Why the 1960 doomsday prediction matters today in debates over disaster

A prediction with a precise date

Von Foerster’s paper argued that population growth was accelerating toward an impossible endpoint: an infinite number of people. He said his descendants would be “squeezed to death,” and identified November 13, 2026, as doomsday. The date would have been his 115th birthday.

The paper used a mathematical equation fitted to population data spanning two millennia. The article says von Foerster designed the equation to make the predicted outcome inevitable. Its wider argument—that population growth was unsustainable—echoed concerns dating back to Thomas Malthus’s 18th-century Essay on the Principle of Population.

Forecasts and lasting consequences

Population-crisis warnings continued. In 1968, American biologist and environmentalist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, predicting mass famine. The Limits to Growth report followed four years later, forecasting systemic collapse by the 2020s as population growth depleted resources.

The predictions proved wildly wrong, the article says, but policies pursued in their name caused harm. During the 1970s, international agencies promoted birth control, sometimes making it a condition for food aid. Forced sterilisation programmes began in south Asia, while China’s one-child policy remained in place until 2015.

Population trends reversed

The number of people under 15 worldwide peaked in 2021, despite the abandonment of those programmes. Many countries now face concerns about ageing populations. Japan, Hungary, Turkey and China are encouraging couples to have more children. That shift is far removed from the future imagined by von Foerster and other population pessimists in the 1960s.

Lessons for disaster predictions

The article presents the paper as a cautionary tale for today’s predictions. A high-profile report published last month listed 17 “major catastrophic threats,” including nuclear war and malicious use of AI as threats with “extinction potential,” and forecast impacts through 2100.

It argues that scientific modelling and advocacy should be distinguished: worst-case scenarios can be used to persuade, while the choices built into a model shape its possible outcomes. Exaggeration can erode trust, and claims to be “following the science” can shut down debate. The article also warns that ignoring inconvenient evidence can backfire, noting that von Foerster and others failed to account for lower birth rates in richer, healthier and better-educated societies.