A 1968 book predicted mass famine in the 1970s and was wrong on almost every specific. It also changed policy on three continents, some of it coercive. A forecast can be false and consequential at the same time.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
LAB1-046 · The Population Bomb — Open the drawer
A 1968 mass-market paperback by Paul R. Ehrlich predicting imminent global famine. Its cover, typography, and distribution made apocalyptic demography accessible to millions, shaping policy despite inaccurate timelines.
LAB1-047 · The Population Bomb — What is this thing?
The 1968 paperback edition of Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb, a bestselling environmental forecast predicting imminent global famine. Its wide circulation and accessible format made catastrophic demographic predictions reach millions of readers and policymakers simultaneously.
LAB1-048 · The Population Bomb — Read the source
First edition (1968) dust jacket of Paul R. Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, featuring apocalyptic cover art and jacket copy predicting imminent famine. Primary source for examining the book's core claims, rhetorical framing, and embedded assumptions about population growth, food supply, and technological limits.
LAB1-049 · The Population Bomb — Map it / time it
Paul Ehrlich's 1968 bestseller predicted imminent mass famine across Asia and Africa by the 1970s. Its specific forecasts failed, yet the alarm mobilized agricultural research, family planning programs, and policy shifts across three continents that may have prevented the predicted collapse.
LAB1-050 · The Population Bomb — Two sources disagree
An official sterilization completion certificate issued during India's Emergency period (1975–77), documenting coercive fertility control tied directly to Population Bomb anxieties. Represents policy consequence of catastrophic prediction.
LAB1-051 · The Population Bomb — State the claim
Paul Ehrlich's 1968 paperback predicted imminent global famine from overpopulation. It sold millions, shaped family planning policy across Asia and Africa, and became the focal point of a famous 1980 wager over resource scarcity—a case study in how false forecasts can drive real institutional change.
LAB1-052 · The Population Bomb — Take the other side
Paul Ehrlich's bestselling monograph predicted imminent mass famine from overpopulation. Though its specific forecasts failed, the book catalyzed agricultural research funding, contraceptive distribution programmes, and policy shifts across Asia, Africa, and Latin America that increased food production and fertility decline.
LAB1-053 · The Population Bomb — Weigh it
Paul Ehrlich's 1968 bestseller predicted imminent global famine from overpopulation. It became a policy blueprint across Asia and Africa, driving agricultural intensification and coercive family planning—outcomes that either prevented or enabled the very crisis it warned against.
LAB1-054 · The Population Bomb — Build the answer
A representative exponential growth chart from Ehrlich-era demography showing unconstrained population curves against food supply, illustrating the visual logic that drove policy despite later falsification.
LAB1-055 · The Population Bomb — For the file
Paul Ehrlich's 1968 paperback predicted imminent mass famine across Asia and Africa by the 1970s. Its specific forecasts failed, yet governments adopted coercive population control policies based on its warnings, making it a consequential false prediction.
LAB1-056 · The Population Bomb — Go and look
Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1968) predicted famine by the 1970s based on exponential growth models. The book became a policy driver across three continents despite its specific forecasts failing, exemplifying how structurally flawed models can produce real-world consequences.
LAB1-057 · The Population Bomb — Now, today
High-yield dwarf rice variety that doubled South Asian harvests in a decade. Its existence proved Malthusian scarcity models incomplete, yet it also enabled population growth that later strained water and soil systems differently than Ehrlich predicted.
LAB1-058 · The Population Bomb — Teach it back
First edition (1968) of Paul Ehrlich's bestselling environmental manifesto predicting imminent global famine. Its apocalyptic cover and sales record (millions of copies) made it the most influential false forecast of the postwar era, triggering policy shifts in family planning and agriculture across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
LAB1-059 · The Population Bomb — The other place
A seed packet of IR8 'miracle rice,' developed by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and distributed widely across Asia from 1966 onward. It embodied the technological response to population-growth fears and became the material anchor of the Green Revolution in a region where The Population Bomb's predictions took different forms.
LAB1-060 · The Population Bomb — One object, close
First edition cover of Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (Ballantine Books, 1968), featuring bold typography and apocalyptic imagery that framed overpopulation as an imminent crisis requiring urgent action.
From the gallery’s own wall — “LAB1-046 · The Population Bomb — Open the drawer”.