Got Any Plans Next Weekend?

If you were excited over Democrats' Big Beautiful Blue Tsunami, Pogo Possum might have some 66-year-old bad news for you.

"Pogo" by Walt Kelly, Dec. 8, 1960

It seems that some scientific prognosticator at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Professor Heinz von Foerster, predicted that the world would come to an end a week from today. 

And that was six decades before anybody had ever heard of AI.

"Pogo" by Walt Kelly, Dec. 9, 1960

"Our great-great-grandchildren will not starve to death," von Foerster with co-writers Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot, whose field was electrical engineering, calculated in the November 4, 1960 edition of Science magazine. "They will be squeezed to death."

from Science, Nov. 4, 1960 (page 1291)

World population in December, 1960 was estimated to be just under 3,020,000,000; it's over 8,300,000,000 today. The rate of population growth in the present decade, however, has been half what it was in 1960, so there is a possibility that Professor von Foerster's and his colleagues' calculations might be slightly off.

"Pogo" by Walt Kelly, Dec. 10, 1960

A widely syndicated newspaper report of Professor von Foerster's Doomsday prediction offered our generation a ray of hope:

"By 2026, we will probably be visiting other planets and colonizing them. And by that time, people will be laughing about 'earth people' who at one time thought that their planet was the only one suitable for life — and inhabited. Why of all the billions of earths and planets, should we alone enjoy conditions suitable for life?"

The paper by von Foerster et al. also considered that possibility in its final paragraph.

"Among the suggestions that have been advanced for meeting this problem — legislation, heavy taxation of families that have more than two children, cancellation of tax deductions, and so on — space travel has been proposed recently as an alternative (R.C. Christopher & T. Griffith, Time, 75, No. 2, 22, 1960). It is only unfortunate that no reentry permit can be given these space-trotters."

Might as well finish off the rest of the Halloween candy, then.