⚓ Directory
PLAN GALLERY LXXXVI
GALLERY LXXXVI

The Population Bomb

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.

Charles Horton Cooley
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.”
Edward Soja
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.”
George Herbert Mead
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.
🎧 A moment to consider
What will you carry out of this room?
← EXIT TO
Gallery LXXXV · The Hardening Line
EXIT TO →
Gallery LXXXVII · New Coke
FULL EXHIBIT →
🗺 POCKET MAP
🗺 Museum Map
Galleries
IFire and the Forest IIThe First Surplus IIIWater and Power IVThe Domesticated Animal VThe First Village VIThe Metal That Mattered VIIThe Grain Empire VIIIRoads and Rivers IXThe Silk Corridor XThe Monsoon Bargain XIWhy Rome Thinned XIIThe Classical City XIIIThe Maize Bargain XIVTerrace and Milpa XVThe City in the Lake XVIThe Classic Maya Question XVIIReading the Sky XVIIIA Hemisphere Without Horses XIXThe Heavy Plough XXThe Black Death XXIThe Caravan World XXIIThe Rice Revolution XXIIIWood and the Wall XXIVThe Little Ice Age XXVThe Columbian Exchange XXVIThe Sugar Island XXVIIThe Silver Mountain XXVIIIThe Wind That Made Empires XXIXFur, Fish and Frontier XXXThe First Global City XXXIThe Walking City XXXIICoal and the Clock XXXIIIGoing Up Rural Businesses XXXIVThe Cooled Room The Gerrymander The Income Pyramid XXXVThe New Mills XXXVIThe Company and the Charter XXXVIIThe Meeting Ground XXXVIIIThe Company Town XXXIXThe Town and the Common XLThe Invisible Arrival XLIThe Consumer Revolution XLIIThe Argument in Print XLIIIWho Was the Revolution For? XLIVThe Machine of Compromise XLVThe Grid Goes West XLVIThe Port City XLVIIThe War Itself XLVIIIThe First Party Fight XLIXRemoval LThe Factory Girls LIThe House Divided LIIReconstruction and Its Undoing LIIIThe Chosen Nation LIVThe Tenement and the Terrace LVThe Immigrant Ledger LVIThe Machine and the Ward LVIIWhy Buildings Rise LVIIIThe Reservation and the Allotment LIXThe Federal Blueprint LXThe Arsenal LXIThe Subsidised Suburb LXIIThe Second Great Migration LXIIIThe Movement in the Street LXIVThe Bomb LXVThe Factory Closes LXVIThe Return Downtown LXVIIThe Sunbelt Bargain LXVIIIThe Worked Continent LXIXThe Hero and the Record LXXThe Reform Photograph LXXIThe Great Upheaval LXXIIThe Cotton Engine LXXIIIThe Corps of Discovery LXXIVThe Republican Experiment LXXVWho Counts? LXXVIThe Canal and the Rail LXXVIIThe Edsel LXXVIIIThe Transcontinental LXXIXThe Crash and the Line LXXXThe Census LXXXIThe Tower Again LXXXIIThe Screen and the Square LXXXIIIThe Literary Digest Poll LXXXIVUrban Renewal LXXXVThe Hardening Line LXXXVIThe Population Bomb ◄ YOU ARE HERE LXXXVIINew Coke LXXXVIIIGalloping Gertie LXXXIXThe Question XCThe Index XCIThe Map XCIIThe Poverty Line XCIIIThe Normal XCIVThe Hawthorne Works XCVProhibition XCVIMoving to Opportunity XCVIIThe Obedience Studies XCVIIIThe Minimum Wage Fight XCIXAfter the Towers CThe Sword Rack at the Door CIThe First Light CIIThe Forge of Stars CIIIThe Rocky Ledger CIVThe Goldilocks Band CVThe Moon's Receipt CVIThe Deep Clock CVIIThe Living Spark CVIIIThe Oxygen Revolution CIXThe Drifting Map CXThe Great Dyings CXIThe Mammal's Wager CXIIThe Grasslands Bargain CXIIIThe Fire Keeper CXIVThe Language Leap CXVThe Painted Cave CXVIThe Long Migration CXVIIThe Dog at the Fire CXVIIIThe Ice Corridor CXIXThe Seed Contract CXXThe Village Ledger CXXIThe Writing Debt CXXIIThe City Threshold CXXIIIThe Metal and the Market CXXIVThe Plague Network CXXVThe Ocean Bridge CXXVIThe Silver Circuit CXXVIIThe Machine Threshold CXXVIIIThe Energy Bonanza CXXIXThe Population Curve CXXXThe Telegraph World CXXXIThe Great Acceleration CXXXIIThe Carbon Ledger CXXXIIIThe Information Threshold CXXXIVThe Genome Drawer CXXXVThe Anthropocene Question CXXXVIThe Next Threshold CXXXVIIThe Town Meeting CXXXVIIIThe Common and the Fence CXXXIXThe Sheriff and the Jury CXLThe School Board CXLIThe Charter CXLIIThe Petition CXLIIIThe Property Line CXLIVThe Ballot Box CXLVThe Ward Machine CXLVIThe Suffrage March CXLVIIThe Poll Tax Receipt CXLVIIIThe Recount CXLIXThe King's Two Bodies CLThe Parliament CLIThe Republic's Blueprint CLIIThe Federation Question CLIIIThe One-Party State CLIVThe Referendum CLVMarbury's Desk CLVIThe Fourteenth Amendment CLVIISeparate and Unequal CLVIIIThe Warren Bench CLIXThe Commerce Clause CLXThe Dissent CLXIThe Zoning Map CLXIIThe Boss's Ledger CLXIIIThe Bond Issue CLXIVThe Police Power CLXVThe Annexation Fight CLXVIThe Renewal Bulldozer CLXVIIThe Treaty Table CLXVIIIThe Embassy CLXIXThe Blockade CLXXThe Alliance CLXXIThe Assembly Floor CLXXIIThe Trade War CLXXIIIThe Question-Mark Tracks Emblematic Films — The Decade Panels The Government Lounge Rogues, Ruffians, and Rascals The Processing Hall — The Dairy Wing The Creamery — The Second Wing The Civil Rights Movement 1945–1975 The American Indian The Gallery of Man The Sobering Rooms The Teaching Ward The Pharmacology Cabinet The Pathology Gallery The Epidemiology Map Room
Plan your visit
Research
Your route
…tracing your steps…