End of the World on November 13, 2026? What the 1960 Study Said

The date of November 13, 2026 as the end of the world comes from a 1960 article in the journal Science, titled ‘Doomsday: Friday, November 13, 2026’ and signed by the Austro-American physicist Heinz von Foerster.¹² It is not a prophecy in the strict sense: it is the date on which, according to a calculation of population growth, a mathematical curve would have reached an infinite value. Real growth then took a different path.²³

What the 1960 Study Claimed

The authors started from demographic data covering about two millennia and traced the trend in the number of inhabitants of the Earth. Projecting that trend forward, the value would have become infinite in November 2026.¹² No precise time was given. The meaning of the calculation, according to Adnkronos, was that by Friday the 13th the population would have multiplied without limit, until it collapsed under its own weight from overpopulation.²⁴ The Spanish daily ABC specifies the type of growth assumed: for part of the twentieth century the population had been increasing faster and faster, not simply exponentially but hyperbolically. If the same trend continued, the planet would no longer have had room for human beings.³ Adnkronos reports that the aim of the study was to draw attention to overpopulation, a topic deeply felt in those years.¹²

Why the Prediction Did Not Come True

The curve matched the study’s parameters until the early nineties. Then the growth of the world population slowed and the curve went ‘off axis’.¹² Growth was at its fastest in 1963, three years after the study, when it exceeded two percent a year. In 2020 it had fallen below one percent.¹² According to ABC, the calculations described the reality of the twentieth century well: mortality was falling thanks to better nutrition, hygiene, health services, vaccines, antibiotics and medical care, while families continued to have many children. The mistake, again according to the newspaper, was to assume that a trend valid for one historical period would last forever.³ According to the estimates of the UN, the United Nations, world population will peak in mid-2080, at 10.3 billion inhabitants, and then decline.¹²

One Date Among Many Announced

According to ABC, since antiquity more than a hundred predictions have indicated a precise date for the end of the world, and humanity has outlived them all. Among the most recent, the newspaper cites the ‘millennium bug’ of 1999, the prophecy of the Mayan calendar of December 21, 2012, and the alleged collision with the planet Nibiru on September 23, 2017.³ Another Spanish newspaper presents the case as a failed prediction: the study announced a population so large that it would cause death by crushing, and this did not happen.⁵

This article was written by artificial intelligence from the sources cited, without human review. Automatic newsroom by Redazia.

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Il 13 novembre 2026 finirà il mondo”, lo studio del 1960 che ha previsto l’Apocalisse, Adnkronos, 2026-11-12 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

2. “Oggi finirà il mondo”, lo studio del 1960 che ha previsto l’Apocalisse per il 13 novembre 2026, Adnkronos, 2026-11-13 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. Llegó el 13 de noviembre de 2026, el día del fin del mundo que se anunció en ‘Science’, ABC (España), 2026-11-13 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. “Oggi finirà il mondo”, lo studio del 1960 che ha previsto l’Apocalisse per il 13 novembre 2026, Startupbusiness.it, 2026-11-13 ↩

5. El fin del mundo era hoy… pero la previsión que lo anunció en 1960 ha fallado, 20minutos, 2026-11-13 ↩