John Titor

John Titor's military insignia.

John Titor was the name of a purported time traveller from the year 2036. He posted on several time travel-related Internet bulletin boards during 2000/2001, making many vague as well as clear, falsifiable predictions about events in the near future and giving an explicit, detailed account of his supposed native time period. Whether or not John Titor was a hoax is a topic of controversy on web-based paranormal discussion boards.

Overview

File:Ibm-pc-5100.jpg

The IBM 5100 Portable Computer

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 "debug" various legacy computer programs in 2036. Some believe the computer 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. However, John Titor rejected that, but stated the machine was needed as an aid to translate between some legacy IBM systems and UNIX.

He then travelled to 2000 to visit his family, including his infant self.

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. "Titor" may also be a shortened version of the Ukrainian surname Titorenko (which incidentally is Raisa Gorbachev's maiden name).

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 black, 1966 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible shown in the photographs he provided), 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 their Florida home in 2000/2001.

Although investigating Titor's claims is complicated by their speculative nature, 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 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 U.S. government will assume that its citizens would prefer security rather than freedom. The present USA PATRIOT Act could be construed to overtly trade freedoms against the hope of greater security (some say these are Constitutional freedoms, and another phase is being planned 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 2037 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 Omaha, 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 complementing the exotic advances necessary for time travel. 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. Titor also seems to be a Sabbatarian, predicting that U.S. Christians will return to celebrating Saturday as the biblical Sabbath.

Titor's predictions in detail

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

Iraq War

John Titor predicted that the US would go to war with Iraq over claims that the latter had nuclear weapons. These predictions proved to be true. Titor wrote:

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?

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 nuclear weapons, or to the notion that this is a recent discovery. It is, of course, the first interpretation that has been confirmed as "BS" ("BS" is American slang for bullshit, a mild obscenity denoting falsehood). The second interpretation is problematic, however, in that Iraq was not 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 that at the time he was writing had not been made. (Such allegations date back to the Osiraq bombing in 1981, but had subsided and were not repeated at the time of writing beyond a few Iraqi dissidents.)

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 in 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.

In support of the prediction, however, in September 2003, Bush administration National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (now secretary of state) infamously warned of a "mushroom cloud" over American cities if the United States did not invade Iraq.

Vice President Dick Cheney also explicity warned of nuclear weapons being built by Iraq with the intention of using them against the United States, citing later-discredited intelligence that showed Iraq "moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months." Top Bush officials push case against Saddam, CNN, Sept. 8, 2002

Civil unrest

Titor also predicted that there would be civil unrest during or shortly following the U.S. Presidential election of 2004 that would gradually escalate into civil war in 2005. Titor wrote:

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, Titor responded:

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"?

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.

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. He also seems to suggest that the election will be decided by extraordinary means. The 2004 election passed with little protest; his prediction of votes being uncounted in Florida might be interpreted as allegations of voter fraud (see 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities). 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). Likewise, if Titor is from the Future, he may be misremembering the details of the past he was visiting, and confusing the 2000 Elections with those of 2004. The devastation and ensuing violence in New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina has shades of civil conflict. It remains to be seen if Titor's predictions of "civil unrest" are true.

Civil war

Titor further predicted that the civil war would pit rural against urban areas, as the government would be able to secure control of the cities, but not the countryside. Titor wrote:

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.

Titor went on to say that by 2008, the population will come to realize that the previous situation in the United States will not be restored:

The year 2008 was a general date by which time everyone will realize the world they thought they were living in was over.

Nuclear war

Nuclear war in the Middle East

As a result of the civil unrest and civil war in the United States, Titor predicted that there will be a nuclear war between Middle Eastern powers, apparently between Israel and Islamic powers. A wavering in western support for Israel will precipitate this.

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.

In response to the question "How and why do the Arabs Jews become entangled in the civil war of the U.S.A?", Titor said that "they are not directly involved but political situations are dependant on Western stability, which collapses in 2005." When asked if weapons of mass destruction would be used against the United States by Arab powers, Titor predicted that the weapons are "not [used] against America but they are used against each other." He went on to say that:

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".

Titor proponents sometimes interpret the last statement as a prediction of suicide bombings.

Nuclear war with Russia

Furthermore, says Titor, in 2015, Russia will nuke the United States, China, and Europe. Nearly 3 billion people will die, and the entire world will be gravely damaged.

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.

China's conquest of Asian nations

Titor also warned that Korea, Taiwan, and Japan will all be conquered by China.

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.

CERN's research

Titor noted that work in the early 2000s at the CERN laboratory will lay the foundations for time travel.

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.

Mad cow disease

Titor warned that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (commonly known as mad-cow disease) would grow to become a very serious health issue in humans (rather than merely killing cattle).

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.

Genetically-modified food

Titor warned that 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.

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.

Quantum physics

Titor also claimed that the many-worlds interpretation (the Everett-Wheeler model) of quantum physics is correct.

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.)

IBM 5100

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

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.

Religion in America

On religion, Titor said that it will loom larger in American life, but also decentralize. Sabbatarianism gains popularity.

Yes I believe in Jesus Christ and we pray to God in churches. There are some differences you may be interested in. Religion is a major part of people's life in 2036. Pain and change tend to bring people together and closer to God. However, religion is far more personal than it is now. There are no huge, centralized religions and people talk openly about their beliefs. It might also interest you to know that the day of worship is Saturday, the day God meant to be the Sabbath and the 10 commandments have been restored to the "10" that God gave us.

View of the present in the future

Titor said that the future will judge the present harshly.

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.

Divergence of worldlines

When Titor was asked "How is our worldline different from this one?" he replied that "divergence" from the history he remembers was already observable:

For starters, the fact that I'm here makes it different. I've also noticed little things like news events that happen at different times, football games won by other teams, things like that.

I would guess the temporal divergence between this world line and my original is about 1 or 2 percent. Of course, the longer I am here, the larger that divergence becomes from my point of view...the divergence can be more accurate with more sensitive gravity sensors and clocks. The C206 uses 6 Caesium clocks^[1] and an active method of timing the changes in the atom". [2]

Criticism of Titor's claims

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 non-fiction works such as 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.

Titor also seems to use our modern diction.

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 (unless he focused on ancient history) would give him a great deal of information on the events of 1998-2036. Titor avoids answering complex questions concerning the environment.

The core of Titor's argument is formed around the fact that a civil war erupts in the United States in 2004-2005.

Titor and the Year 2038 Problem

Many technical people criticise Titor for the improbable scenario he has built around the year 2038 problem as the main reason for his claimed time travel. The year 2038 problem is a very well understood and, in theory, easily rectified shortcoming of most software running on 32-bit UNIX machines.

John Titor did not claim to come back for a year 2038 bug fix. According to Titor:

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 langages [sic] in addition to APL and Basic. We need they [sic] system to "debug" various lagacy [sic] computer programs in 2036. UNIX has a problem in 2038.

The last sentence brought the confusion about the "need to fix a UNIX bug". Several months later he clears this up:

I don't believe I ever said I came back looking for a UNIX bug fix. I came back for a computer system. Don't you find UNIX usefull [sic] now?

In "their" problems around the 2038 bug the IBM was needed to translate between legacy IBM machines and UNIX:

As you are probably aware, UNIX will have a timeout error in 2038 and many of the mainframe systems that ran a large part of the infrastructure were based on very old IBM computer code. The 5100 has the ability to easily translate between the old IBM code, APL, BASIC and (with a few tweaks in 1975) UNIX. This may seem insignificant but the fact that the 5100 is portable means I can easily take it back to 2036. I do expect they will create some sort of emulation system to use in multiple locations.

Titor in other media

• In 2003, the John Titor Foundation published a book, John Titor A Time Traveler's Tale, discussing his claims (ISBN 1591964369).
• In 2004, Cyburbia Productions presented Time Traveler Zero Zero, a stage performance based on the Titor story.
• In 2005, Figure 26 Films produced a film, Obsessed & Scientific, which in part tells the story of John Titor.

Footnotes

1. ^ Titor claimed that his time travel device utilized 6 caesium based atomic clocks, which are accurate to 1 part in 10¹⁵. However, on May 23, 2005, researchers in Japan announced the creation of a new atomic clock using strontium atoms trapped in an optical lattice, which is accurate to 1 part in 10¹⁸. Titor says that to minimize "worldline divergence" the most accurate atomic clock are preferred, which is hard to reconcile with the use of now "obsolete" caesium-clock technology. This may be the first anachronism that undermines the credibility of the Titor story, although the actual precision of the clocks in the C204 (and C206) are not specified, and may exceed both of these in accuracy. (A research program capable of developing time travel might have superior time-keeping technology, and Titor says that his caesium clocks are actively corrected.)

References

• Brown, Robert. Dr. Robert Brown's Replies to Darby RE. Titor (2003). Retrieved February 5, 2005.
• John Titor - Time Traveler (2003). Retrieved February 4, 2005.
• John Titor's Story (2005). Retrieved February 4, 2005.

External links

• "TitorWeb", a website about John Titor
• The following links contain his postings plus discussions and analysis on the veracity of his claims.
  • Reconstruction of "Time Travel Paradoxes!"
  • Reconstruction of "Topics Limited to 11 Pages?"
  • Reconstruction of "Parallel Universe"
  • Reconstruction of "I am from 2036"
  • Anomalies.net's Time Travel forum
  • Discussion headed "Titor is a Liar" on Anomalies.net
  • Discussion headed "John Titor's Laser Picture was FAKED - Proof" on Anomalies.net
  • Robert Brown's critique
  • DNS based investigation into the mystery of John Titor
  • Physics web – New strontium based atomic clocks, more accurate than the caesium atomic clocks Titor claimed to have used