A 1960 doomsday forecast meets a world of falling birthrates

An Israeli report revisits the population calculation that singled out November 13, 2026, and explains why its assumptions did not hold.

Channel: Kan News Hebrew channel · IsraelStory of November 13, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? One of כאן | חדשות - תאגיד השידור הישראלי's most watched videos since yesterday, with 40,447 views.

כאן | חדשות - תאגיד השידור הישראלי: The news division of Kan, Israel's public broadcaster. 808K subscribers and 1.9B views.

התחזית המדעית משנות השישים: סוף העולם צפוי מחר

Next story: Revolut gets initial approval for an Israeli bank, not an opening date

Friday, November 13, 2026 had an ominous appointment in the scientific literature: a population-growth calculation published in 1960 pointed to that date as "Doomsday." But the calculation's trajectory was not humanity's destiny.

Kan News, the news division of Israel's public broadcaster, revisits the prediction in Dov Gil-Har's report, explaining how slowing birthrates undermined an extrapolation of past population growth. The segment opens with television and social-media clips reviving the date, then turns to the science behind it.

The original paper, by Heinz von Foerster and colleagues in the journal Science, carried the striking title "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026". Extending the historical growth curve produced a mathematical breaking point: population would become unbounded. That was a warning about where the model led, not evidence that people would literally crush one another on a particular Friday.

Demographer and statistician Professor Sergio Della Pergola explains the underlying concern: a growing population could eventually outstrip available resources. He describes von Foerster's intervention as a well-intentioned warning intended to encourage governments to slow birthrates. The report also notes a personal coincidence: the chosen date fell on the scientist's birthday.

What changed was human behavior. Gil-Har traces declining birthrates from the 1970s onward, linking the shift partly to contraception and cultural changes. A curve fitted to earlier growth could not simply be extended indefinitely once those patterns changed.

Della Pergola says the decline began in the West and identifies Israel as an exception within the developed world, with its highest birthrate. Looking further ahead, he expects the world's population to be smaller in 2100 than in 2080.

The Hebrew upload is titled "התחזית המדעית משנות השישים: סוף העולם צפוי מחר", meaning "The scientific prediction from the sixties: The world is expected to end tomorrow." Published the evening before the named date, it ends with Della Pergola playfully suggesting that Gil-Har wait another night.

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The numbers

The report drew about 40,000 views since yesterday, placing it among Israel's most-watched new news uploads.

subscribers

808,000

▲ 1,000 in the last 7 days

total views

1,851,780,754

views per day

432,187

typical day: 1,071,194

the video

views

40,447

likes

230

comments

106

days online

1

subscribers: this channel and similar channels

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1,140,000

HOT

857,000

כאן | חדשות - תאגיד השידו…

808,000

yes tv (יס)

736,000

HOTVODyoung

609,000

רשת 13

526,000

As of November 13, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.