Today is Friday, November 13, 2026. And according to a scientific prediction made 66 years ago, humanity is supposed to go extinct today.
In 1960, physicist Heinz von Foerster and his colleagues Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot published a scientific paper in the journal Science with the rather alarming title:
Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026.
The researchers had examined historical population growth and discovered what appeared to be an accelerating mathematical trend. Their calculations suggested that the world’s population was increasing so rapidly that it would eventually approach a mathematical singularity — a point at which the projected population would become infinite.
And the date they calculated for this extraordinary event was November 13, 2026.
Today.
Well, here we are.
Humanity is still here. More than eight billion of us, in fact.
We are not extinct.
So what happened?
Were the researchers simply wrong? Or did something happen between 1960 and today that fundamentally changed the trajectory of humanity?
The answer is rather fascinating.
The Population Explosion That Never Happened
During the middle of the twentieth century, the world’s population was growing at an unprecedented rate.
In 1960, approximately three billion people inhabited the planet. Medical advances, improved sanitation, better nutrition, and declining infant mortality had dramatically increased life expectancy.
More people were surviving, and populations were expanding rapidly.
The fear of overpopulation became widespread.
In 1968, biologist Paul Ehrlich published his famous book The Population Bomb, warning that rapid population growth could lead to catastrophic food shortages and widespread starvation.
The underlying assumption was that humanity would continue multiplying until the planet could no longer sustain us.
And looking at the population trends of the time, such concerns were understandable.
But something happened that the mathematical projections failed to anticipate.
Changing Behavior
Humanity changed its behavior.
People began having fewer children.
Not everywhere at once, and not for exactly the same reasons, but gradually, across much of the world, birth rates began declining.
Women gained greater access to education, employment, contraception, and reproductive choices. Families became smaller as societies developed and urbanized.
As healthcare improved and infant mortality declined, parents could increasingly expect their children to survive into adulthood.
In agricultural societies, large families had often been economically advantageous. In modern urban societies, raising children became more expensive, and education required more years of investment.
People’s expectations, opportunities, and priorities changed.
Meanwhile, agricultural innovations dramatically increased food production, allowing humanity to feed a population far larger than many had imagined possible.
The result was a profound transformation.
The annual global population growth rate, which peaked at around 2.3 percent in the 1960s, has now fallen below one percent. In some countries the concern is that too few babies are born.
And according to United Nations projections, the world’s population is expected to peak at approximately 10.3 billion during the 2080s before gradually declining.
Instead of the uncontrollable population explosion predicted in 1960, humanity is now moving toward a stabilization of its population.
The future changed because the conditions and behavior shaping that future changed.
And perhaps there is a much greater lesson here.
The Fear of Too Many People
Even today, we frequently encounter the fear that there are simply too many people on Earth.
That humanity is multiplying beyond the planet’s capacity.
That we will inevitably consume all available resources, destroy nature, and ultimately bring about our own extinction.
Sometimes this fear almost becomes a form of hysteria, as though the very existence of billions of human beings were itself the fundamental problem.
But is it?
Certainly, population matters. Every human being needs food, water, shelter, energy, and other resources. Our planet is finite, and there are ecological limits to what it can sustainably provide.
But does that necessarily mean that humanity’s numbers are the primary problem?
Or could the problem be something entirely different?
Perhaps the fundamental question is not how many people inhabit our planet, but how we organize the way we live on it.
Consider the enormous differences in resource consumption between people living in wealthy industrialized societies and those living in poverty.
Consider how much food is wasted while millions of people go hungry.
Consider how many products are manufactured primarily to generate sales, only to be discarded and replaced long before their useful lives are over.
Consider the vast amounts of energy, materials, labor, and transportation involved in maintaining a global economy that depends upon continuous economic growth and increasing consumption.
Is this really the most intelligent way to manage the resources of one finite planet?
Careful Assumptions
The failed population prediction demonstrates that we should be careful about assuming that current trends must continue indefinitely.
It does not prove that environmental limits are imaginary or that population pressures are irrelevant.
But it does show that humanity’s future cannot be understood simply by extending yesterday’s behavior into tomorrow.
And that brings us to an even more important question.
The Predictions of Today
Today, humanity faces an extraordinary number of predictions about its future.
Climate change is expected to bring rising temperatures, melting ice, rising oceans, and increasingly severe environmental consequences.
Scientists warn about biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and the depletion of natural resources.
Economists warn about debt crises, financial instability, unemployment, and the consequences of slowing economic growth.
Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people continue living in extreme poverty despite humanity’s extraordinary technological and productive capabilities.
Some even warn that humanity could eventually destroy itself through environmental collapse, nuclear conflict, or uncontrolled technological development.
These are not all predictions of the same kind.
Many climate projections, for example, are grounded in well-established physical processes and extensive scientific evidence. Their consequences cannot simply be wished away.
But there is something important that we should remember when looking into the future.
Most projections depend upon assumptions about what humanity will continue doing.
What if those assumptions change?
What if humanity changes its behavior?
Changing the System
What if we change not merely our individual habits, but the very system through which we organize civilization?
What if we stop treating continuous monetary growth as the primary measure of human progress?
What if we stop organizing the production and distribution of resources primarily around profitability?
What if we begin managing our planet’s resources according to actual human needs and ecological sustainability?
Would that not fundamentally change many of the trajectories we are currently predicting?
The System We Take for Granted
For centuries, humanity has organized its economic activity around money, trade, ownership, competition, and the accumulation of wealth.
Today, virtually every country operates within a global monetary system in which access to resources depends heavily upon purchasing power.
Production is largely driven by the expectation of monetary returns.
Businesses must remain profitable. Economies are expected to grow. Employment and incomes depend upon continued economic activity.
And because consumption drives so much of this activity, we find ourselves in a peculiar situation.
We are constantly encouraged to consume more, even while being warned that our consumption is placing unsustainable pressure on the planet and the natural world upon which we depend to live.
We are told that we must reduce waste and conserve resources, while simultaneously being told that declining consumption threatens economic stability.
We possess the technology to produce enormous quantities of food, yet people still go hungry because they cannot afford what they need.
We possess the knowledge and resources to build housing, yet millions remain homeless or inadequately housed.
And we continue to measure economic success primarily through monetary transactions rather than the actual well-being of humanity and the living planet.
Perhaps this is not simply a collection of unrelated problems.
Perhaps many of these contradictions arise from the way we have chosen to organize our civilization.
And perhaps we have reached a point in human history when we are finally capable of recognizing them.
What If We Changed the System?
Imagine that humanity decided to approach the management of our planet in an entirely different way.
Instead of dividing the world into competing economic interests, imagine organizing our resources through global cooperation.
Instead of treating natural resources as commodities to be owned, bought, and sold, imagine treating them as a shared inheritance that humanity has a responsibility to manage wisely.
Instead of producing goods primarily for monetary profit, imagine producing what people actually need, in quantities and ways that nature can sustainably support.
Imagine using artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced agriculture, renewable energy, and sophisticated resource-management systems to coordinate production and distribution intelligently.
We could design products to last rather than to be replaced unnecessarily.
We could reduce duplication, waste, excessive transportation, and unnecessary resource extraction.
We could restore ecosystems, protect biodiversity, regenerate damaged landscapes, and organize human settlements around the well-being of both people and nature.
And we could ensure that everyone has access to the necessities of life without requiring them to compete for monetary purchasing power.
This is the fundamental idea behind a global resource-based economy.
An economy based not upon the circulation and accumulation of money, but upon the intelligent and sustainable management of Earth’s resources for the benefit of all life.
Such a transformation would not automatically eliminate every environmental problem. It would require extraordinary cooperation, careful planning, scientific understanding, and a profound respect for the ecological limits of our planet.
But it could change the assumptions upon which many of today’s frightening predictions are based.
And perhaps most importantly, it could allow humanity to reduce its ecological footprint dramatically while simultaneously improving the quality of life for billions of people.
A prosperous life does not necessarily require endless consumption.
It requires access to what makes life worth living.
Food, shelter, healthcare, education, security, companionship, creativity, freedom, and the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the world.
None of these fundamentally requires the perpetual accumulation of monetary wealth.
Perhaps we have simply confused the means with the ends.
A New Prediction for Humanity
And now, on this rather remarkable Friday, November 13, 2026, allow me to make another prediction.
I predict that humanity is approaching a great awakening.
Not necessarily a spiritual awakening, but an awakening of understanding.
An increasing realization that the global monetary system we have created, with its endless pursuit of profit, accumulation, competition, and economic growth, is placing enormous pressure upon humanity, nature, and the living planet itself.
I predict that more and more people will begin questioning not merely how to improve this system, but why we continue organizing civilization around it in the first place.
Why should access to the necessities of life depend upon money?
Why should our ability to care for one another depend upon whether doing so is financially profitable?
Why should humanity compete for ownership of the resources of one planet when we could cooperate in managing them for everyone’s benefit?
And why should we continue pursuing endless economic growth when what we actually desire is a flourishing life on a flourishing planet?
Perhaps humanity is approaching the point where these questions become impossible to ignore.
And perhaps, as our understanding changes, our behavior will change as well.
Just as millions of individual decisions transformed humanity’s demographic trajectory during the past 66 years, a growing collective understanding could transform the way we organize our civilization during the next 66.
We could move from competition toward cooperation.
From ownership toward stewardship.
From monetary accumulation toward sustainable abundance.
From an economy organized around transactions toward a civilization organized around life itself.
And in doing so, we might fundamentally alter the future that so many of today’s predictions assume awaits us.
Will my prediction come true?
I cannot know.
But neither could the researchers of 1960 know what humanity would become 66 years later.
And perhaps that is precisely the point.
The Future Is Ours to Create
Today, November 13, 2026, humanity was supposed to go extinct.
It didn’t.
The mathematical trajectory predicted in 1960 did not become reality because the world did not remain the same.
Technology changed.
Societies changed.
Human behavior changed.
And the future changed with them.
Today, we face another collection of alarming predictions about where humanity is heading.
Some describe a future of ecological devastation, increasing inequality, resource conflicts, and declining living conditions.
But perhaps we should ask ourselves a different question.
What if we don’t continue along our seemingly present trajectory?
What if we recognize that many of our greatest problems are not inevitable consequences of human existence, but consequences of how we have organized our civilization?
What if we discover that the resources, knowledge, technology, and human creativity already available to us could be organized in an entirely different way?
What if we choose to create a world where every human being can flourish while nature is allowed to flourish alongside us?
A world of cooperation, trust, sharing, and intelligent stewardship.
A world where humanity no longer regards itself as a collection of competing economic interests, but as one civilization sharing one extraordinary living planet.
Perhaps such a world would seem almost like paradise compared with the one we know today.
But paradise need not mean a perfect world without challenges.
It could simply mean a world in which humanity has finally learned to live intelligently, peacefully, and sustainably with itself and nature.
The researchers of 1960 could not predict the profound changes that would alter humanity’s population trajectory.
And perhaps today’s researchers cannot fully anticipate the changes in human understanding that may alter our economic and ecological trajectory.
Because the future is not predetermined by the systems and circumstances of the present.
We are not prisoners of our predictions. We are participants in creating the future.
The Beginning
And perhaps, rather than approaching the end of humanity, we are approaching something entirely different.
The beginning of a new civilization.
Want to Experience This Future ?
Since you’ve read this far, I assume you enjoy reading!
And if you’d like to read a little more, perhaps even immerse yourself in a story set in the future world described in this article, I invite you to discover the novel: Waking Up: A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.
There, you’ll experience this extraordinary new world firsthand through the eyes of the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels, a man who, facing terminal cancer, chose cryonic preservation in the hope of escaping his fate.
When he awakens 100 years later, he discovers a world beyond his imagination. A world without money, poverty, or competition for survival. A world where humanity has fundamentally transformed the way it lives.
And Benjamin, a man who built his entire life around money, power, and ownership, is shocked, to say the least…