The « end of the world » of November 13, 2026 is not a current scientific alert. This date comes from a demographic study published in 1960. Its authors extended a population growth curve to an impossible mathematical result: an infinite number of inhabitants. The reappearance of this date in online research does not transform this historical model into disaster prediction.
The end of the world of November 13 comes from a 1960 model
The text does exist. Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora and Lawrence W. Amiot published on 4 November 1960. The three researchers worked in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Illinois University in Urbana. Their study focused on the human population, not an astronomical threat.
Its subtitle was an essential condition: the population would approach infinitely if it continued to grow as in the previous two millennia. The authors had collected 24 demographic estimates, covering approximately the beginning of our era until 1958. They adjusted a function to these data and then extended it.
The calculation led to a deadline around 2026, with several years of uncertainty. The precise day highlighted in the title was therefore not a date of catastrophe measured with daily precision. The result depended on maintaining the assumptions of the model.
Growth to accelerate without limits
The authors were not content to imagine a steadily growing population. They were interested in faster growth. Their reasoning gave a central place to human capacities for communication and cooperation. A larger population could, under this assumption, better address the obstacles to its development.
The historian Alan MacEachern of Western University in Canada revisited this episode in a text released on November 9. He recalled that the study had generated scientific criticism, but also sustained attention. His demographic projections remained close to observations for some of the following decades.
This concordance did not last. According to his analysis, the world population began to deviate significantly from the forecasts around 1993. Births did not follow the assumed unlimited acceleration. The historian thus places publication in the demographic concerns of the mid-20th century, rather than in an advertisement valid for today.
UN projections describe another trajectory
The UN demographic outlook published in 2024 envisaged a world population from 8.2 billion that year to about 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s. After this maximum, they predicted a slight decline, around 10.2 billion at the end of the century. These values are projections, not guaranteed future counts.
This trajectory does not resemble a curve that would become infinite in November 2026. In particular, it takes account of fertility trends. In this edition, the United Nations estimated the world average at 2.25 live births per woman, about one child less than a generation before.
A slowdown in growth, however, does not mean that the world population is already declining. In the scenario presented by the United Nations, the number of inhabitants continues to increase for several decades before reaching its maximum.
A wanted date, not a new discovery
On the morning of 13 November, Google Trends posted the German request that this date be associated with the end of the world among the active trends. The threshold was 100,000 research in Germany and 2,000 in Switzerland over the last 24 hours. These indications concern consolidated searches, not the number of people who adhere to this statement.
The event of the day is therefore the return of an old deadline in public attention. The study is 66 years old; its date of publication remains on November 4, 1960. His model provides no new evidence of a disaster expected this Friday.
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