"Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026 (1960)

Heinz von Foerster, Patricia Mora, and Lawrence Amiot analyze historical estimates of human population and argue that growth over roughly two millennia followed a strikingly accelerating pattern. Rather than increasing at a constant rate or by a fixed percentage, population growth appeared to speed up as population itself grew. They describe this as a mathematical relationship in which the rate of increase is proportional to the square of population, and use the fit to historical data to extrapolate a point at which the model’s predicted population becomes infinite: 13 November 2026. The date gives the work its deliberately alarming title.

The prediction is a consequence of extending the observed curve, not a claim that people would literally multiply without limit on that day. Its central warning is that continued growth under the same pattern cannot persist indefinitely: the mathematical singularity signals that the trend must change before then, whether through constraints, social shifts, or a breakdown in the model’s assumptions. The analysis makes the timing of that turning point vivid, while raising broader questions about the forces behind population growth and whether past rates can be projected into the future. Its significance lies in presenting rapid population increase as an accelerating process that demands attention, rather than as a steady rise that can be managed by simple extrapolation.