John Titor
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 that Titor posted on bulletin boards, he made several specific, falsifiable predictions about events in the near future that will ultimately prove his story true or false. He also did not give an explicit, detailed account; the 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 traveller. 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' itself is a pseudonym.
Titor was also happy to hold question-and-answer sessions during his stay. Many find that a provocative aspect about 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 existance 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 laser light being bent by the time displacement outside the 'vertical safe distance' of the time travelling vehicle.
He claimed his time machine - a "C206 time displacement" machine - was created by General Electric. Supposedly, he transported it in a standard motor vehicle 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 again. There is apparently video footage of his time machine disappearing, but this has never been released.
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 decimated 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.
Criticism of Titor's claims
Titor's story has been criticised on various grounds of internal consistency. Examples include; Titor's mission to collect a 1975 computer makes no sense considering the technological resources available in 2036; the claimed detour to 2000 to experience the milenium bug is implausible, because not only was there no real effects from it, but also 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'.
Dr. Robert Brown, a physicist at Duke University analyzes 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 in other media
In 2003, the "John Titor Foundation" published a book, John Titor A Time Traveler's (sic) Tale, discussing his claims. See ISBN 1591964369 .
External links
These links contain his postings plus discussions and analysis on the veracity of his claims.