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John Titor

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John Titor's military insignia.

John Titor is the name of a purported time traveller from the year 2036. He posted on several time travel-related Internet bulletin boards during 2000/2001. A notable feature of Titor's claims is that they are literate, elaborate, evocative, and reasonably consistent; they are even accompanied by photographic evidence. As a result, many have come to believe his claims (especially in the pseudoscientific community); however, many who are more skeptical hold that his claims are a hoax or possibly an example of kookery, and still others are taking a "wait and see" approach until there is definite evidence one way or the other.

Synopsis of Titor's claims

During the period Titor posted on bulletin boards, he made many specific, falsifiable predictions about events in the near future that will ultimately prove his story true or false. He also gave an explicit, detailed account; below is a composite of his statements.

Titor claimed to be a serving soldier who was recruited to a governmental time travel project. He was supposedly sent from 2036 back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100 computer which he claimed was needed to overcome a Unix bug—Unix-based machines would no longer function after 2038, a known bug related to the 32-bit nature of the Unix clock.

He then travelled to 2000 to visit his family, including his infant self. He also stated that he wished to see the effects of the millennium bug.

Titor began open discussion on Internet bulletin boards, apparently to gauge people's reactions upon encountering an actual time traveler. His first post was on November 2, 2000, initially using the username Timetravel_0 before switching to John Titor. It is therefore possible that "John Titor" is a pseudonym, perhaps derived from Timetravel_0, plus a terminal r as in timetraveller.

File:Titor1.jpg
This picture, taken in Autumn of 2035, according to Titor, depicts his training officer inside the time displacement vehicle. He is shining a laser pointer out the window, which appears to bend under the extreme gravitational forces.

Titor was also happy to hold question-and-answer sessions during his stay. Many find that a provocative aspect of Titor's story is that it is accompanied by a well-described theory of how exactly Titor manages to travel in time that is consistent with known concepts of time travel and black hole mechanics, along with the philosophical impact on Titor's society created by the realisation of the existence of multiple timelines. The theory was supported by pictorial evidence, including schematics and photographs of his "time distortion gravity displacement" machine, as well as a photograph of it in use showing a laser beam being bent by the time displacement outside the 'vertical safe distance' of the time travelling vehicle. Some skeptics believe a photo-manipulating program was used to obscure or even eliminate small details which would have weighed against the validity of said documents. Skeptics also argue that any conventional gravity capable of bending light would normally instantly absorb all nearby matter, and in the car in question, the beam would be bending across the passenger side door and passing out the window, placing the microsingularity source just outside the vehicle.

He claimed his time machine—a "C204 time displacement" machine—was created by General Electric. Supposedly, he transported it in a standard motor vehicle (a model-year 1966 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible to be exact), and the car also served as his vessel whilst travelling through time (it remained stationary throughout with the engine off). He claimed that the public is fully aware of time travel in his time period, although the extreme skeptics of his day do not believe it exists.

On March 24 2001 Titor stated that he would be returning to his own time, and did not post as John Titor again. There is allegedly video footage of his time machine disappearing, but this has never been released or observed by a neutral party. Titor also claimed to have shifted the traveling device to a stiffer, frame-suspended "Chevy Truck" for his return home to year 2036. The photographic evidence places this vehicle as a 1987 Chevrolet Suburban 4x4 which Titor claimed he obtained while staying with his parents in 2000/2001.

Although the context of Titor's claims are highly speculative, they appear to have a very polarizing effect on the people who read them. Currently, there are organized groups on the Internet attempting to locate the actual author(s) of the John Titor posts. Some are using scare tactics, intimidation, and propaganda; others are exposing visual flaws in the photographic evidence, or by pointing out inconsistent logic in statements he made. On the other side, many Titor believers, or "Titorites" as they are referred to, point to some of the following predictions made by Titor when he posted in 2000/2001.

  1. Titor gave technical details about his time machine that involved the use of mini-black holes. He stated that CERN would make an announcement pertaining to this within a year after he discussed it. In the fall of 2001, after John left, CERN issued a press release indicating the possibility of creating mini-black holes was realistic. The work being explored in this area was speculated upon some months prior to that time.
  2. He stated that the IBM 5100 computer had special abilities that were unpublished by IBM. Numerous IBM engineers have come forward to confirm this claim.
  3. He made numerous comments about Constitutional and civil rights changing in the United States.
  4. He stated that mad cow disease would arrive and be downplayed in the United States.
  5. Titor stated, years before an Iraqi war was even a possibility, that WMDs would not be found in Iraq and that another war would be fought under the pretense of removing its nuclear capability.
  6. He claimed that the government will assume that its citizens would prefer security rather than freedom. At the present, the USA PATRIOT Act is seen by some to nullify key freedoms given by the Constitution and another phase is being planned as an addition which will allow federal agents to search and arrest citizens without a warrant.

Titor's description of the future

Titor's description of events between 2000 and 2036 effectively describes World War III and two decades of recovery.

He claims that the seeds of this conflict will begin to be seen in 2004/2005 around the time of U.S. presidential election, 2004. Continuing Muslim/Jewish tensions are still a problem at that time but are not the cause; instead, an American civil war is brought on by increasingly intrusive police state tactics more or less resembling the massacres at Waco and Ruby Ridge. The "second civil war" sees those in the cities fighting those in rural areas; Titor fought on the rural forces, joining a "shotgun militia" when he was 13.

The civil war is effectively ended by Russia in 2015 when it commences nuclear warfare on most major US cities, eliminating the federal government and thereby securing a 'victory' for the rural forces. Most major urban areas in the world are also hit by nuclear weapons in tit-for-tat retaliation. Europe, Africa and Australia are particularly badly hit in this regard and, Titor claims, are devastated as approximately three billion people die worldwide.

By 2036, people are making progress in recovering from the war. There are five US states (the seat of government is in Nebraska). Society is considerably decentralized, focused on tight-knit rural communities. There is more emphasis on religion, personal interaction (as opposed to mass media and other sources of social isolation) and self-sufficiency. Technology does not seem to be widely affected, however, with "predictable" advances such as rapid rail transport between cities, space travel and genetic engineering. Water must still be filtered or distilled to remove radioactive particles and life is harsh, with people expected to work in the fields to produce locally-grown food for part of their day.

Titor's claims of life in 2036 strongly resemble ideals held by survivalists, militias and some Libertarians in some respects, though in others they are similar to those held by advocates of deep ecology or anarcho-syndicalism. He is skeptical of consumerism, militarism, genetically-modified foods, and commercial food processing generally, all of which are positions associated with environmentalism and/or the Political Left.

Titor's predictions in detail

Early Predictions:

In the interest of evaluating Titor's claims more precisely, here are some of the more specific predictions that can be derived from his writings.

John Titor's early prediction comes from faxes that he (allegedly) sent the ArtBell show in 1998: [1]

1. Y2K will be a disaster leading to martial law and deaths. Government efforts to remedy the situation fail.

Now for the future you might want to know about. Y2K is a disaster. Many people die on the highways when they freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather. The government tries to keep power by instituting marshall law but all of it collapses when their efforts to bring the power back up fail. A few years later communial government system is developed after the constitution takes a few twists. China retakes Taiwan. Israel wins the largest battle for their life and Russia is covered in Nuclear snow from their collapsed reactors.

Discussion: John Titor's predictions about Y2K completely fail. When asked about this prediction, he claims that he decided to intervene to prevent the Y2K disaster.

Later Predictions:

The following predictions are from johntitor.com, along with the exact quotes on which they are based. It is useful to note that Titor stated that he had no interest in "proving" that he was a time traveler, and many of his "predictions" were offhand comments or answers to specific questions. This section was entered in its original form shortly before the 2004 Presidential election. All Titor quotes in the section are from the www.johntitor.com website, as that site existed in October 2004.

2. The US will go to war with Iraq over claims that the latter has nuclear weapons. These claims would prove to be false.

Relevant Titor quotes:

None of the things I have said will be a surprise. They were set in motion ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?

Discussion: This quote is often taken as a Titor prediction that is far from obvious and that has come true. It is possible to differ with this interpretation. Linguistically, the "BS" in the statement could refer either to the allegation that Iraq has nukes, or to the notion that this is a recent discovery. It is, of course, the first interpretation that has been confirmed as "BS" ("BS" in American slang is an abbreviation for bullshit, a mild obscenity denoting falsehood). The second interpretation is problematic, however, in that Iraq was not even alleged at the time of Titor's writing to have or to be close to possessing nukes. It is, therefore, difficult to understand how he would come to refer to an allegation which at the time he was writing had not even been made. Another objection to the legitimacy of the prediction is that the Bush administration did not state that Iraq had nuclear weapons per se, but only that it had weapons of mass destruction of other kinds and was trying to and soon would acquire nukes. It may be that this distinction will not loom large 35 years after the fact, however. It is worth noting that alleged Iraqi possession of nuclear weapons was not part of the general public discourse at all at the time this statement was allegedly made (early 2001). However, critics add that the Project for the New American Century was developing plans for invading Iraq to oust Saddam as early as 1998.

3. There will be civil unrest during or shortly following the Presidential election of 2004 which would gradually escalate into civil war in 2005.

Relevant Titor quotes:

There is a civil war in the United States that starts in 2005. That conflict flares up and down for 10 years.
Real disruptions in world events begin with the destabilization of the West as a result of degrading US foreign policy and consistency. This becomes apparent around 2004 as civil unrest develops near the next presidential election.
The civil war in the United States will start in 2004. I would describe it as having a Waco type event every month that steadily gets worse. The conflict will consume everyone in the US by 2012 and end in 2015 with a very short WWIII.
The President or "leader" in 2005 I believe tried desperately to be the next Lincoln and hold the country together but many of their policies drove a larger wedge into the Bill of Rights.
[In response to a question about the then-current election dispute of 2000]: I would use the word "elections" a bit cautiously. Perhaps it's easier now to see a civil war in your future?
I am curious… will anyone be upset if Florida's votes are not counted in the Electoral College because of the current "confusion"? [ellipses and quotes in original]
According to the Constitution, who do you think has the final word on choosing a President and why?
I do however, find it interesting how important the Constitution became to the average US citizen's life, if even for a short moment.

Discussion: There has been some cavil about Titor stating in one place that the war starts in 2004 and in another in 2005. Since he describes the war as emerging gradually from civil unrest around the election, which occurs in November, this may be overblown. It also suggests that a new President will emerge in 2005, but he does not directly state this. He also seems to suggest that the election will be decided by extraordinary means. Though the 2004 Election passed with relatively few issues (see 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities), with George W. Bush winning a second term, it saw the biggest voter turnout for years, and the race was very close, with one state (Ohio) swinging the votes in Bush's favor (see U.S. presidential election, 2004). It remains to be seen if Titor's predictions of "civil unrest" are true.

4. The civil war as it emerges will pit rural against urban areas, as the government will be able to secure control of the cities, but not the countryside.

Relevant Titor quotes:

When the civil "conflict" started and got worse, people generally decided to either stay in the cities and lose most of their civil rights under the guise of security or leave the cities for more isolated and rural areas. Our home was searched once and the neighbor across the street was arrested for some unknown reason. That convinced my father to leave the city.

5. Around 2008, the population will come to realize that the previous situation in the United States will not be restored. A new President will take power in 2009.

Relevant Titor quotes:

The year 2008 was a general date by which time everyone will realize the world they thought they were living in was over.
The President in 2009 was interested only in keeping his/her power base.

6. At some time during this period, there will be nuclear war between Middle Eastern powers, apparently between Israel and Islamic powers. This will be precipitated by a wavering in western support for Israel.

Relevant Titor quotes:

The Jewish population in Israel is not prepared for a true offensive war. They are prepared for the ultimate defense. Wavering western support for Israel is what gives Israel's neighbors the confidence to attack. The last resort for a defensive Israel and its offensive Arab neighbors is to use weapons of mass destruction. In the grand scheme of things, the war in the Middle East is a part of what's to come, not the cause.
[question]:How and why do the Arabs Jews become entangled in the civil war of the U.S.A? [Titor's answer]: They are not directly involved but political situations are dependant on Western stability, which collapses in 2005. [question]: The Arab countries appear to have weapons of mass destruction. Do they use them against America? [Titor's answer]: Not against America but they are used against each other.
I'm glad to see it's so easy for to dismiss the Middle East. Yes, I suppose it is a no brainer but pretty soon it will be a "no arrmer" [sic] and a "no legger".

Discussion: The last statement is sometimes interpreted by Titor proponents as a prediction of suicide bombings.

7. Korea, Taiwan, and Japan will all be conquered by China.

Relevant Titor quotes:

Taiwan, Japan and Korea were all "forcefully annexed" before N Day.
The West will become very unstable which gives China the confidence to "expand". I'm assuming you are all aware that China has millions of male soldiers right now that they know will never be able to find wives.

8. In the early 2000's, work at the CERN laboratory will lay the foundations for time travel.

Relevant Titor quotes:

The one [experiment at CERN] I'm referring to involves very high energies using protons. From my historical perspective on my worldline, I do recall the issue was a point of contention about 18 months ago or so. There were some scientists who thought the experiments were too dangerous to try.
My comments about the CERN lab are in reference to particle accelerators in general and other questions that have come up in the past. The major physics break through for controlled gravity distortion does happen at CERN in your future. Heck, we haven't even touched on "Z" field compression yet.
A great deal of the theoretical mathematics behind time travel was discovered by testing various ideas in string theory and eliminating the anomalies. As I recall, it was this original work that led to the final proof that six dimensions do indeed curl up to give us our observable universe. This in turn supported more of the theoretical math behind time travel.

9. CJD (mad-cow disease) would grow to become a very serious health issue.

Relevant Titor quotes:

Yes, and people are still dying and a great deal of them are passing from CJD. As I said, with my very first few posts almost 6 months ago, I want to emphasize how devastating this will be.

10. In 2015, there will be a global nuclear war between the United States, China, Europe, and Russia. Nearly 3 billion people will die. The entire world will be damaged.

Relevant Titor quotes:

The civil war ended in 2015 when Russia attacked the U.S. cities (our enemy), China and Europe.
Russia and China have always had a very strange relationship. Even the news I see now indicates that continued weapons deals to allies, border clashes and overpopulation will lead to hostilities. The West will become very unstable which gives China the confidence to "expand". I'm assuming you are all aware that China has millions of male soldiers right now that they know will never be able to find wives. The attack on Europe is in response to a unified European army that masses and moves East from Germany.

11. The genetic modification of food to create hybrid seeds will have deleterious effects. The common American diet of commercially-prepared food has serious health risks that are currently unrecognized.

Relevant Titor quotes:

Yes, genetic engineering is used but it's like any other technology. It can be good and bad. One thing we did not do was create more hybrid seeds. What are people thinking?
you willfully eat poisoned food
It's very hard for me to find food here. It all scares the Hell out of me.
I am amazed at the risks people here are willing to take with processed food. All of the food I eat here is grown and prepared by my family or myself.

12. The many-worlds interpretation (the Everett-Wheeler model) of quantum physics is correct.

Relevant Titor quotes:

Now for the physics: The grandfather paradox is impossible. In fact, all paradox is impossible. The Everett-Wheeler-Graham or multiple world theory is correct. All possible quantum states, events, possibilities and outcomes are real, eventual and occurring. The chances of everything happening someplace at sometime in the superverse is 100%. (For all you scientists out there, if Schroedinger's cat had a time machine, he might not be in the box at all.)

13. The IBM 5100, a portable computer from the early 1970's, can read IBM code written before the use of APL and Basic. This, Titor claims, is an undocumented feature.

Relevant Titor quotes:

I was "sent" to get an IBM computer system called the 5100. It was one the first portable computers made and it has the ability to read the older IBM programming languages in addition to APL and Basic. We need the system to "debug" various legacy computer programs in 2036. UNIX has a problem in 2038.
On my worldline, it is known that the 5100 series is capable of reading all the IBM code written before the widespread use of APL and Basic.
In 2036, it was discovered (or at least known after testing) that the 5100 computer was capable of reading and changing all of the legacy code written by IBM before the release of that system and still be able to create new code in APL and basic. That is the reason we need it in 2036. However, IBM never published that information because it would have probably destroyed a large part of their business infrastructure in the early 70s. In fact, I would bet the engineers were probably told to keep their mouth's shut.

Titor also indicates that Unix has a date overflow problem in 2038. This is true, but is common knowledge among those interested in such things, so does not count as a prediction.

14. The future will judge the present harshly.

Relevant Titor quotes:

Perhaps I should let you all in on a little secret. No one likes you in the future. This time period is looked at as being full of lazy, self-centered, civically ignorant sheep. Perhaps you should be less concerned about me and more concerned about that.

The question of inevitability

Titor's explanation of time travel is premised on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. In this model, as presented by Titor, every situation that can go in more than one direction, goes in every possible direction, and each possibility is the origin point of a new parallel universe or "worldline" . In time travel, one does not actually enter one's own past because, at a minimum, one's own presence in the past makes a change and generates a new, ever-expanding set of worldlines. One enters rather the past of a closely-related worldline (whether it is also possible to enter a distantly-related worldline is not addressed). Therefore, the worldline Titor describes as his "past" is very similar, but not identical, to our own present and near future.

For this reason, none of Titor's predictions are inevitable for us by his own account. In some worldlines descended from ours, his predictions are likely to be entirely fulfilled, in others not, and in a third set partially fulfilled. This can be taken as a way to fudge the predictions since it means that Titor's claims are not, strictly speaking, falsifiable. However, it also means that those who take Titor seriously need not treat his predictions as fate. The future Titor paints is quite bleak, and it is much more heartening to take his words as a warning than as something immutable. If his predictions seem to be coming true, he has offered us some good hints as to what might result and what needs to be avoided (though he himself stated that he was not interested in helping us avoid them, as they were the consequences of our own collective decisions). The decisions we make in this worldline still determine the fate of this worldline. According to himself, Titor's own existence in 1975, if only for a short time, can have major effects on the 'worldline', thus making his time and our future possibly very different. Therefore, Titor's words can serve as a warning of the future we are creating if we move in the direction his predictions indicate. In Titor's own words:

As far as I can tell right now, you are headed toward the same events I would call "my history" in 2036. However, the very nature of time travel states that every worldline is unique and you are very much in control of what you do and how you get there.
You are able to change your worldline for better or worse just as I am.
Therefore, any "prediction" I might make has a slight chance of being incorrect anyway and you now have the ability to act on it based on what I've said. Can you stop the war before it gets here? Sure. Will you do it? Probably not.
Yes, it's very possible that what I say would spin your future off into a different direction.

Criticism of Titor's claims

Titor's story has been criticised on various grounds of internal consistency. Examples include: his mission to collect a 1975 computer makes no sense considering the technological resources available in 2036; the claimed detour to 2000 to experience the millennium bug is implausible, because not only were there no real effects from it, but he also gave the wrong year (the changeover from 1999 to 2000 was critical, not 2000 to 2001; and Titor's own self-publicising actions, compared to his descriptions of the ramifications of time travel, vastly increase the chances of his own mission being a failure.

Also, there are discrepancies between Titor's claims of the future and actual events, for example his failure to predict the 9/11 attacks; however, his statements may have been deliberately misleading or affected by changes that he made in the 'worldline'.

As noted, his predictions reflect strongly on militia-style conspiracy theories about an increasingly oppressive government, that among other things, tries to repress armed civilians. Such views were popular among extreme right-wing factions during the Clinton Administration, in the wake of events like Waco. However, because the current US political climate dramatically shifted as a result of 9-11, militia-type theories no longer hold the same popular appeal they once did. As a result, critics argue that Titor's claims represent a clearly pre 9-11, 1990's mindset, arguing his claims seem to be blatantly dated. It is possible, however, that criticism based on the events of September 11th, 2001 is clouded by contemporaneous political fervor, obstructing objective assessment of the anarcho-syndicalist model Titor posits.

On a basic level, humans are very vulnerable to the idea of a dystopian future. People living in the aftermath of the First World War imagined that future generations, living in a world devastated by war, would view their ancestors as pointlessly violent. During the Cold War, people imagined that their descendants would live harsh lives in a post-apocalyptic world and would view the past generation as being prepared to sacrifice their whole civilisation for the sake of capitalist/communist ideology. Today, people fear that future generations will look back on us as being greedy, lazy, and uncaring about the plight of the world. This may be the case, but equally, people in the year 2036 might well look back on the first years of the century as being a "golden age" of freedom and plenty, or a barbaric dystopia of ignorance and hypocrisy, or, as is most likely, a society with both positive and negative qualities, like any other society in human history.

A major criticism of Titor's claims is that the supposed managers of the 2036 time travel project would send back an educated and intelligent person who was familiar with historical events over the last thirty years, could describe their own society in detail, and who would be fully aware of exactly how the time device worked. Titor's internet postings are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, and present-day linguists do not predict major changes in spelling or verb usage over the course of the next thirty years - such major linguistic changes take centuries to evolve. Titor's claims about future events are disconcertingly vague - if a project team was going to send somebody back in time, surely they would send back a person who had at the very least a basic grasp of recent history, including concrete facts such as significant dates, persons, and events from 1998-2036.

Dr. Robert Brown, a physicist at Duke University analysed the science involved in Titor's time travel explanations and states it is impossible, both in theory and practice. He alludes that Titor's story plagiarizes older science novels such as Alas, Babylon and Michio Kaku's Hyperspace to construct his time travelling stories. He concludes his critique by suggesting that people are extremely gullible to believe the plausibility of Titor's time travel and stories of a post-apocalypse world.

Titor's story also shows similarities to the plot of the 1995 movie 12 Monkeys, and to a fictional timeline for a role-playing game (see external links).

The website www.johntitor.com, which posts question-and-answer format discussions between John Titor and forum members, provides critics with countless examples of inconsistencies in Titor's claims. Titor claims that one of his favourite hobbies is reading history, which should logically give him a great deal of information on the events of 1998-2036. However, he does not mention a single historical fact. Titor avoids answering complex questions concerning the environment.

He makes no reference to events or societies outside the United States, lending heavy support to the argument that "John Titor" is simply another US internet radical who wishes to change American society.

Titor in other media

In 2003, the John Titor Foundation published a book, John Titor A Time Traveler's Tale, discussing his claims. See ISBN 1591964369 .

In 2004, Cyburbia Productions presented Time Traveler Zero Zero, a stage performance based on the Titor story.

References

See also

These links contain his postings plus discussions and analysis on the veracity of his claims.

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