A 1960 Doomsday Forecast Names This November — and Held Up Until 1993
In 1960, the journal Science published an article predicting that on 13 November 2026 the human population would approach infinity. That date falls this November, which makes the paper's afterlife more interesting than its prediction. The article was regularly cited, and its forecasts appeared remarkably accurate — until around 1993, halfway to the predicted date, when global population growth began falling behind them. Which is the usable lesson: a projection can track decades of data and still misdescribe what comes next, because the parameters that fit the past are not promises about the future. Growth stopped following the curve, and the doomsday date became an artifact of a model rather than a deadline.
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The unsettling part is not that a forecast failed. It is how long a well-fitted curve can look right. This one survived more than three decades of citations before reality drifted off it.
Calling it accurate until 1993 flatters it. A forecast that names a specific doomsday can be wide of the mark for decades before the miss becomes visible; 1993 is when the error got large enough to notice, not when it started.