June 29: The Population Bomb

"The Population Bomb", by Stanford conservation biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, was published on this date in 1968. In it he claimed that with an exploding world population set to outpace any possible growth in agricultural output, Malthusian famines would sweep the world in the 70s and beyond.

The book began on a sharply unequivocal note. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."


And as Kitten Week draws toward a close here at Today's Date in Apocalypse History, here is a picture of a particularly excited-looking little kitten: