No evidence of a World Economic Forum document that ‘confirms 6 billion humans will die in 2025’

An Aug. 24 Instagram post sounded alarms about the impending demise of a huge chunk of the world’s population. 

In 2025, the post said, 6 million humans — nearly three quarters of the world’s total population in 2024 — will die. Its source? A supposed document from the World Economic Forum. 

"WEF document confirms 6 billion humans will die in 2025," read the post.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

We found an article with the same headline published Aug. 22 on The People’s Voice, a website known for spreading misinformation. We’ve repeatedly fact-checked the site’s false headlines, and the byline, Baxter Dmitry, is often on misinformation sites.

(Screenshot from Instagram)

The article took the claim a step further, saying, "A World Economic Forum report hiding in plain sight confirms that upwards of six billion people will die in 2025." 

However, the article does not identify or link to any World Economic Forum document that meets that description. The World Economic Forum is an international not-for-profit organization that encourages cooperation between political, business, academic and other leaders. 

PolitiFact contacted the World Economic Forum, but did not immediately receive a response.

The People’s Voice article claimed that the website Deagel.com — a site that does not appear to identify its ownership and calls itself a "guide to military equipment and civil aviation," with information sourced from sites including some owned by Russian state government — predicted the 6 billion deaths, linking only to an Internet Archive version of the 2025 forecast, which the article said had been removed from Deagel.com "sometime in 2020." 

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Deagel.com’s forecast predicted falling population totals for many countries, including the U.S., which it said would decrease from 326.6 million people to 99.5 million people. However, the archived site does not cite a time frame for its prediction. 

At the bottom of the archived Deagel.com page, a note says, "There is a tiny part of data coming from a variety of shadow sources such as Internet gurus, unsigned reports and others. … We assume that the official data, especially economic, released by governments is fake, cooked or distorted in some degree."

The note also said, "Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a model whether flawed or correct."

The People’s Voice weaved a winding and uncorroborated tale linking Deagel.com to the World Economic Forum. 

Currently, the world’s population is 8.2 billion people. We found no reputable news organizations or credible information showing that a World Economic Forum document "confirm(ed) 6 billion humans" — or over 70% of the world’s population — will die in 2025.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire! 

PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.