John Titor " Time Traveler "

John Titor

 

John Titor's military insignia John Titor is the name used on several bulletin boards during 2000 and 2001 by a poster

claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036.[1] In these posts he made numerous

predictions (a number of them vague, some quite specific[2]) about events in the near future,

starting with events in 2004.

However, as of 2011, these

events appear not to have

taken place; he described a

drastically changed future in which the United States had broken into five smaller regions,

the environment and

infrastructure had been

devastated by a nuclear attack,

and most other world powers

had been destroyed. To date, the story has been

retold on numerous web sites, in

a book, and in a play. He has also

been discussed occasionally on

the radio show Coast to Coast AM.[3] In this respect, the Titor story may be unique in terms of

broad appeal from an originally

limited medium, an Internet

discussion board. Titor's posts The first post appeared on the

Time Travel Institute forums on

November 2, 2000, under the

name TimeTravel_0. At the time

the posts had nothing to do with

future events and the name "John Titor" was not being used.

Instead, the posts discussed time

travel in general, the first one

being the "six parts" description

of what a time machine would

need to have to work (see below) and responses to

questions about how such a

machine would work. Early

messages tended to be short. The name "John Titor" was not

introduced until January 2001,

when TimeTravel_0 began

posting at the Art Bell BBS Forums (which required a name

or pseudonym for every account). The Titor posts ended

in late March 2001. Eventually, a

number of the threads became

corrupted; but Titor's posts had

been saved on subscribers' hard

drives and were copied to Anomalies.net, along with new

discussions of the science behind

Titor's time travelling as well as his predictions.[4] Around 2003, various websites reproduced

Titor's posts, re-arranging them

into narratives. Not all refer to the original dates posted.[5] Outline In his online postings, Titor

claimed to be an American soldier

from the year 2036, based in Tampa in Hillsborough County, Florida, who was assigned to a governmental time-travel

project. Purportedly, Titor had

been sent back to 1975 to

retrieve an IBM 5100 computer which he said was needed to

"debug" various legacy computer programs in 2036; a reference

to the UNIX 2038 problem. The 5100 runs the APL and BASIC programming languages. Titor

had been selected for this

mission specifically, given that his

paternal grandfather was

directly involved with the

assembly and programming of the 5100. Titor claimed to be on a

stopover in the year 2000 for

"personal reasons"; i.e., to collect

pictures lost in the (future) civil

war and to visit his family, of

whom he spoke often. Titor also said he had been, for a few

months, trying to alert anyone

that would listen about the

threat of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease spread through beef products and about the

possibility of civil war within the

United States. When questioned

about them by an online

subscriber, Titor also expressed

an interest in unexplained mysteries such as UFOs (which in his time were still as yet

unexplained). Titor suggested

that UFOs and alien visitors may

well be time travelers from much

further into the future than his

own time, who possessed superior time machines to his

own. Time machine Titor described the time machine

on several occasions. In an early

post, he described it as a

"stationary mass, temporal

displacement unit powered by

two top-spin, dual positive singularities", producing a

"standard off-set Tipler sinusoid".

The earliest post was more

explicit, saying it contained the

following: Two magnetic housing units

for the dual micro

singularities An electron injection manifold to alter mass and gravity

micro singularities A cooling and X-ray venting system Gravity sensors, or a variable

gravity lock Four main cesium clocks Three main computer units According to the posts, the

device was installed in the rear

of a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette convertible and later moved to a

1987 truck having four-wheel

drive. Titor further claimed that the

"Everett-Wheeler model of

quantum physics" was correct.

This model, better known as the many-worlds interpretation, posits that every possible

outcome of a quantum decision

actually occurs in a separate

"universe". Titor stated that this

was the reason the grandfather paradox would not occur; following the logic of the

argument, Titor would be killing a

different John Titor's

grandfather in a timeline other

than his own. ...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%.[6] Predictions The most immediate of Titor's

predictions was of an upcoming civil war in the United States having to do with "order and rights".[7] He described it as beginning in 2004,[8] with civil unrest surrounding the presidential election of that

year. This civil conflict that he characterizes as "having a Waco type event every month that steadily gets worse"[8] will be "pretty much at everyone's doorstep"[7] and erupts by 2008. Titor claimed that as a 13-year

old in 2011, he fought with the

Fighting Diamondbacks, a shotgun

infantry unit of Florida, for at

least four years. However, in

other posts he describes himself as hiding from the war. As a

result of the war, the United

States splits into five regions

based on various factors and

differing military objectives. This

civil war, according to Titor, will end in 2015 with a brief but

intense World War III: In 2015, Russia launches a nuclear strike against the

major cities in the United

States (which is the "other

side" of the civil war from

my perspective), China, and Europe. The United States counter attacks. The US

cities are destroyed along

with the AFE (American

Federal Empire)...thus we (in

the country) won. The European Union and China were also destroyed.[9] Titor refers to the exchange as

N Day. Washington, D.C. and Jacksonville, Florida are specifically mentioned as being

hit. After the war, Omaha, Nebraska is the nation's new capital city. Titor is vague as to the exact

motivations and causes for World

War III. At one point he

characterized hostilities as being

led by "border clashes and overpopulation"[10] but also points to the present conflict

between Arabs and Jews as a harbinger of World War III. Examination of the claims Predictive Failures The posts were met with

skepticism when they were being

posted, but it was impossible to

prove beforehand that the

predicted events would not

happen. Because Titor claimed the many-worlds interpretation

of quantum physics was correct,

effectively meaning that his

travel was from a parallel universe and that things could occur differently than he had

predicted, the details he

presented were unfalsifiable. One of Titor's earliest assertions

was that CERN would discover the basis for time travel

sometime around 2001, with the

creation of miniature black holes

about half a year after his

departure. This did not occur. An

article occurring generally around the time he had

predicted about miniature black holes being created by CERN (a recurring theme, also ascribed to Fermilab and Brookhaven at various times[11]) was taken by some to be evidence of this

claim; but these events did not

occur either. Civil war was not

even remotely close to breaking

out after the 2004 presidential

election, with no further conflict in 2008 in the way Titor

described. A particularly obvious example

involves the Olympics, whereof

Titor claimed: "As a result of the

many conflicts, no, there were

no official Olympics after 2004."[12] The politically uneventful staging of the 2006 Winter Olympics,[13] the 2008 Summer Olympics, and the 2010 Winter Olympics refute this claim. Problems with the

Technology In the context of the

demonstration image provided by

John Titor, the laser pointer's beam being "bent" reveals the

obvious inconsistency of objects

near the beam not appearing to

be bent as well. The framing of

the window visible in the

background, for instance, should appear distorted in proximity to

a large gravity gradient, but it does not. Some have speculated the "beam" is an optical fiber.[14] Titor claimed that he was sent

back to obtain an IBM 5100 because it could translate

several types of computer code.

According to IBM engineer Bob

Dubke, Titor's statements

regarding the IBM 5100's little-

known ability to emulate and debug mainframe systems were correct.[15] Supporters state that this information was not

publicly available in 2000 or 2001

when Titor made his declaration, [16] and Titor himself stated that this feature was

"discovered" as late as 2036

when Unix, as the underlying source behind all computer

operating systems still running

local infrastructures and other

computational tasks, was only two years away from no longer

functioning due to 32-bit integer limitations. [17] However, this emulation

capability was widely known in

the industry and commented on

in depth in numerous publications

dealing with both the 5100 and

programmable microcode in general.[18] References to this fact were also available on the

Internet as early as 1999 and

therefore predated Titor's

postings. This is a fairly obscure

bit of trivia, however, which

suggests that whoever was making the posts either was

familiar with the machine

specifically or else had at least a

general interest in retrocomputing.[19] Apparently, APL was a

difficult task for IBM to

accomplish with an

interpreter in the 5100, so

instead they wrote an

emulation program so that the S/360 mainframe

version of APL could be run

instead -- The 5100 is like

a desktop IBM S/360

mainframe computer which only runs APL.[20] Problems with the story Numerous commentators have

pointed out the extensive

similarities between the Titor

story and Pat Frank's classic post-apocalyptic science fiction novel Alas, Babylon.[21] Among other similarities, Alas, Babylon

takes place in a small river-side

town in Florida just before and

after a nuclear war and

describes the struggle to survive

as a family in the aftermath. In the book, the protagonist lives

in the mythical town of "Fort

Repose", while Titor claimed to

live in the "Fort", formerly the University of Florida (UF). The internal consistency of

Titor's story has been

questioned: For instance, in some

posts he claims that money is

widely used and people still have credit cards, despite his statement that centralized

banking no longer exists (this is

either an inconsistency or implies

the rise of private currencies). In another posting he speculated

that today's dollar would be usable in his time, but that this

would be after the

reorganization of the federal

government according to his own

history, potentially making the currency worthless.[22] Other problems with the story

include inconsistencies relative to

Titor's comments. His first

appearance appears to have

been, not in 2000, but in the

summer of 1998 through two faxes to Art Bell's radio program Coast to Coast AM. When he began posting the online story,

Y2K (1-1-2000) had come and

gone without any real problems.

Yet in the 1998 faxes to Art Bell

he said, "Y2K is a disaster. Many

people freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather. The

gov. tries to keep power by

instituting marshall [sic] law..." [23] In the online story he stated

that a part of his mission was to

prevent the coming world war

by changing history. Yet during

October 2000, a month before

he began posting, he appeared in the UK IRC chatroom. In the

chat log his response to

Yariesa's question (asking if we

could change the future from his

prediction) was, "It's too late. I

just wish things didn't have to happen the way they will." [24] Inquiry on the story An Italian TV program (Voyager -

Ai confini della conoscenza) aired

an investigation of the John Titor story on May 19, 2008.[25] Mike Lynch, the private

detective hired to investigate,

found that there were no

registry traces, even far in the

past, of any John Titor or Titor

family. In addition, the John Titor Foundation had no office and its

address is a rented post box; no

tapes, recordings, or evidence of

Titor were found; and only Larry

Haber (an advocate and owner

of the commercial rights about all concerns involving John Titor)

confirmed his existence. Lynch's

conclusion is that John Titor may

be John Rick Haber, a computer

expert who is or was Larry

Haber's brother. In other media In 2003, the John Titor

Foundation published a book,

John Titor: A Time Traveler's

Tale (ISBN 1-59196-436-9), discussing his claims; the book

is now out of print. In 2004, a play based on the John Titor story was staged. In the Japanese Visual Novel

and Anime Steins;Gate, both the legend of Titor and a

character using his name as a pseudonym play vital roles in the story.

source: wikipedia.org