Social media feeds are warning that humanity will face extinction on Friday, November 13, 2026, driven by a mathematical calculation published in Science on November 4, 1960. Experts confirm the date stems from a population growth model that stopped matching reality in the 1990s, assuring the day will pass uneventfully.
The 1960 Population Equation That Set a Doomsday Date
On November 4, 1960, the prestigious journal Science published a four-page article titled Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026
. The paper was written by Austrian-American physicist and cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster alongside two students, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot, at the University of Illinois.
Rather than forecasting an asteroid strike or nuclear catastrophe, the authors examined historical population estimates spanning roughly two thousand years and used hyperbolic growth mathematics to project when human numbers might theoretically reach infinity.
To show that human numbers have in fact continually outpaced expectations, they used 24 estimates of the world population stretching across the past 2,000 years. For centuries of data, that feedback loop fit remarkably well. The underlying equation, written as N(t) = 1.79 × 1011 / (2026.87 − t)0.99, relied on a positive feedback loop. In human history, rising population density fostered communication, tools, better agriculture, and advanced medicine, meaning each doubling took less time than the last.
Because dividing by a number shrinking toward zero produces a result shooting toward infinity, the formula pointed squarely to mid-November 2026.
Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026.
Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora, and Lawrence W. Amiot, via Worldtoend
How Irony Shaped a Serious Warning
The choice of a specific Friday the 13th was part mathematical coincidence and part private joke. The math yielded 2026.87, landing in mid-November, and the thirteenth happened to be a Friday that year.
November 13 was von Foerster's own birthday; had he lived, he would have turned 115 on that date before passing away in 2002 at age 90, as Worldtoend reported.
Why the Mathematical Curve Broke Down in the 1990s
Despite immediate attacks from demographers and mathematicians labeling the paper absurd, the equation tracked real population growth remarkably well throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was cited in textbooks, before a Canadian parliamentary committee in 1963, and in a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court abortion case leading up to Roe v.
Current UN Projections Contrast With Viral Social Media Claims
In recent weeks, viral videos on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels have resurrected the paper with false claims that Harvard scientists
predicted an apocalypse, as Worldtoend detailed. In reality, the authors worked at the University of Illinois, and modern demographic data paints a completely different picture.
The global birth rate today is slightly less than half its 1960 level. Rather than approaching infinity, United Nations data places the current global population at roughly 8.2 billion to 8.3 billion people. The UN's 2024 World Population Prospects project that humanity's numbers will peak in the mid-2080s at approximately 10.3 billion before slowly declining.