Did Klaus Schwab say 6 billion people would die in 2025? Claim explored as it goes viral amid mysterious fog conspiracy 

German mechanical engineer, economist, and the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, is currently trending amid the ongoing mysterious fog theories circulating online.

Dubbed Fogvid-24, the fog-like condition currently dominating the global climate, especially in the UK, the USA, and Canada, has been reported to show cold/ flu-like symptoms and is being compared to COVID-19.

In the wake of this, many online users claim that this fog isn’t natural but rather a part of an elitist conspiracy, once reportedly told by Klaus Schwab himself. According to the theory, the WEF executive chairman allegedly said that 6 billion people would die in 2025.

However, no such comment can be traced back to Klaus Schwab. Instead, a similar statement was written by John Coleman in his 1992 book about conspiracy theories titled, The Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300.

“At least 4 billion ‘useless eaters’ shall be eliminated by the year 2050 by means of limited wars, organized epidemics of fatal rapid-acting diseases, and starvation,” the quote by Coleman read.

It was his conspiracy theory detailing kinds of “mass extermination” and “brutal population control” methods.

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Klaus Schwab did not say 6 billion people would be eliminated in 2025

In September 2024, posts on social networking sites Facebook and X claimed, “WEF Document Confirms 6 Billion Humans Will Die in 2025.” They were based on an August 22 article on The People’s Voice website that claimed an alleged WEF report is “hiding in plain sight” and that Klaus Schwab “has confirmed the stated goal is on target to be achieved.”

However, Reuters debunked the same at the time, citing that the World Economic Forum hadn’t published any such document/ report, nor had their founder made any such remark.

A WEF spokesperson issued an email statement.

“The World Economic Forum does not support nor advocate for depopulation. Claims linking the Forum to depopulation conspiracies are baseless and rooted in disinformation,” the representative wrote.

Besides, The People’s Voice publication didn’t really substantiate their claims, nor did it reference any official WEF report supporting them. Instead, the website cited a prediction by military equipment site Deagel.com that claimed in a 2020 article that around 478.8 million (not 6 billion) of the world population will go down by 2025 and affect 183 countries.

It also referenced economic decline, migration, and systematic crises in social and financial systems apart from depopulation. It added that the prediction was "nothing more than a model whether flawed or correct" and had no affiliation to any official/ governmental agency.

Back then, WEF spokesperson also told Reuters that they had no link to Deagel.com, which The People’s Voice falsely attributed as a publication owned by late U.S. army veteran and former deputy director of the Internation Relations program at the Rockefeller Foundation, Dr. Edwin A. Deagle Jr. In fact, The People’s Voice also misspelled Dr. Edwin’s surname as Deagel.

In December 2022, a similar claim emerged on social media that Klaus Schwab wrote a book that read that there existed a plan to kill billions of “useless eaters” using war, disease, and starvation. However, the Associated Press debunked the same and rightly attributed it to the aforementioned book by John Coleman.

Back then, an image from the book circulated online with the relevant passage highlighted, which not only included extreme population control methods but also racist references to Chinese and Japanese communities. Posts on X, TikTok, and Facebook falsely attributed to Klaus Schwab and were captioned:

“For those of you that don’t know here’s that ambitious page from Klaus Schwab’s book. Make sure you read it all the way through, he’s obviously the voice of the deep state.”

However, AP fact-checked it and traced it back to The Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300, which, although originally published in the early 1990s, was republished by the CIA in 2017.

In his book, Coleman reportedly falsely referenced the “useless eaters” to H.G. Wells’ utopian manifesto, The Open Conspiracy. Instead, the phrase reportedly has a Nazi origin and refers to the extermination of physically abled people, as per the United States Holocaust Museum.

Refuting the social media rumors, WEF spokesperson Yann Zopf told AP in December 2022 that the paragraph “does not appear in any of Klaus Schwab’s books” and was not “otherwise authored by him.”

Before this, in June 2021, Coleman’s quote was misattributed to Thierry Malleret and Klaus Schwab’s book COVID-19: The Great Reset while also allegedly adding:

“The population of Canada, Western Europe, and the United States will be decimated more rapidly than on other continents until the world's population reaches a manageable level of 1 billion, of which 500 million will consist of Chinese and Japanese races, selected because they are people who have been regimented for centuries and who are accustomed to obeying authority without question.”

However, none of the quotes could be traced back to Klaus Schwab’s book. Reuters discredited the same at the time as well.

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The thick and massive fog cover experienced across the globe, especially on both sides of The Atlantic, has not been officially linked with any medical conditions, making the Fogvid-24 claim unfounded. Likewise, neither Klaus Schwab nor the WEF has anything to do with the current happenings.

It has, however, disrupted people's lives, especially their flight schedules, train journeys, and road trips during the festive season.