A significant global outage affecting Microsoft services, including Outlook, has prompted widespread speculation on social media, with some users humorously connecting the disruption to a 1960 scientific paper that predicted "doomsday" on November 13, 2026.
The outage, which began impacting millions of users worldwide, led to widespread inability to access emails and other Microsoft services. Amidst the disruption, social media commentary linked the event to a study by Heinz von Foerster and his students. Published in the journal Science, their paper, titled "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026," projected that human population growth would approach infinity and lead to self-annihilation.
Commenters pointed to the timing of the outage on a Friday the 13th and the approaching date of the 2026 prediction as eerily coincidental. Some posts jokingly suggested the outage was "all planned" or an omen of the predicted apocalypse.
However, experts and the article itself clarify that the 1960 prediction has been debunked. Professor Alan MacEachern, a history professor at Western University, noted that the original calculations were based on outdated figures. The global birth rate has significantly declined since 1960, invalidating the study's core premise of unchecked population growth leading to catastrophe. MacEachern also pointed out that von Foerster, the lead author, had a background in stage magic, suggesting the paper might have employed theatrical elements to draw attention to population dynamics.
Microsoft has attributed the current outage to an internal infrastructure issue, stating that a number of servers failed during automated health checks and that recovery efforts were not proceeding as expected. Experts have largely ruled out a cyber-attack, noting that the symptoms align with internal system failures rather than a flood of malicious traffic.
The disruption, described by some as the "most disruptive email-related business outage of all time," persisted for over 14 hours, affecting governments, police forces, and numerous companies globally. Microsoft has acknowledged the extended impact as it worked to restore services.