Scientist predicted in 1960 the world would end today - on Friday 13th

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It's the end of the world today, Friday the 13th. That's according to a scientific study published more than 60 years ago. The study published in the respected journal Science was…

It's the end of the world today, Friday the 13th. That's according to a scientific study published more than 60 years ago.

The study published in the respected journal Science was authored by Austrian-American physicist Heinz von Foerster, who analysed population data. He and his team arrived at a chilling conclusion, Metro reports.

The researchers concluded that humanity's population would reach infinity this week, triggering armageddon as people desperately competed for resources to survive. The 1960 paper based its prediction on 24 estimates of the global population across the last 2,000 years. It said numbers would reach unsustainable levels if late-1950s birth rates and ongoing advances in medicine and nutrition continued at the same pace.

They wrote: "At this date, human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millennia. Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death. They will be squeezed to death."

Friday, 13 November 2026 was chosen as the so-called 'infinity point' because it fell on the unluckiest date within the range von Foerster had identified, as he explained to the New York Times in November 1960.

The scientist and his colleagues proposed several measures to avert total catastrophe. One suggestion involved imposing higher taxes on families as they grew larger — similar to China's 'one child policy', introduced in 1979, before being relaxed to two children in 2016 and three in 2021.

One particularly outlandish proposal involved establishing colonies in space, on moons and neighbouring planets, with a strict prohibition on inhabitants ever returning to Earth. The paper was published several months before Yuri Gagarin became the first human to venture into space, which perhaps explains why scientists gravitated towards an interplanetary remedy.

Von Foerster's overpopulation forecast was amongst several made during the 1960s, including biologist Paul Ehrlich's publication, The Population Bomb, which boldly claimed…

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