Science fiction writers have frequently made famous predictions in which they portrayed dystopian futures in which the world has become massively overpopulated. This became a major theme in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the first depictions of future megacities was The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (1954). The 1960s saw increasing anxiety about the prospect of the exponential growth of world population, underscored by the publication of Paul R. Ehrlich's non-fiction The Population Bomb, in 1968. The 1969 Star Trek: The Original Series episode entitled The Mark of Gideon dealt with a race of overpopulated aliens who abducted Captain Kirk to solve their population problem.



Ranking on harmful book lists
Traditional conservatives have been especially critical of the ideas of the book: The Population Bomb made the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century in 2003 and was #11 ("honorable" mention) in Human Events Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
The rankings serve only to display the controversy stemming from the book. It is hard to derive any value from the rankings, since both organizations are highly partisan and pick and rank accordingly. Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson were among others to be considered most harmful on Human Events' list

Source: Wikipedia


Although people no longer talk about a catastrophic “population bomb,” world population continues to grow. Unfortunately, the most affected countries are also the ones least able to support more people.

The world’s fastest growing population is in Africa.

The United States is the only developed country where large population increases are still projected, mostly because of immigration.

Nearly three-fifths of the 4.8 billion people in developing countries lack basic sanitation, almost a third have no access to clean water, a quarter lack adequate housing, and a fifth lack access to modern health services.

Population has slowed or stopped in most developed countries.

Developing countries account for more than 95 percent of today’s population growth.

An estimated 5 million people were alive in 8000 B.C., a little more than the present population of Papua New guinea. Today the world’s population is approximately 6 billion people.


Source: National Geographic - Overpopulation





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