John Titor
Encyclopedia
John Titor is the name used on several bulletin board
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
s during 2000 and 2001 by a poster claiming to be a time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
er from the year 2036. In these posts he made numerous predictions (a number of them vague, some quite specific) 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
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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
Coast to Coast AM
Coast to Coast AM is a North American late-night syndicated radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics, but most frequently ones that relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories. It was created by Art Bell and is distributed by Premiere Radio Networks. The program currently...
. 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
Art Bell
Arthur W. "Art" Bell, III is an American broadcaster and author, known primarily as one of the founders and the original host of the paranormal-themed radio program Coast to Coast AM. He also created and formerly hosted its companion show, Dreamland...
BBS Forums (which required a name or pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
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. Around 2003, various websites reproduced Titor's posts, re-arranging them into narratives. Not all refer to the original dates posted.
Outline
In his online postings, Titor claimed to be an American soldier from the year 2036, based in TampaTampa, Florida
Tampa is a city in the U.S. state of Florida. It serves as the county seat for Hillsborough County. Tampa is located on the west coast of Florida. The population of Tampa in 2010 was 335,709....
in Hillsborough County, Florida
Hillsborough County, Florida
As of the census of 2000, there were 998,948 people, 391,357 households, and 255,164 families residing in the county. The population density was 951 people per square mile . There were 425,962 housing units at an average density of 405 per square mile...
, who was assigned to a governmental time-travel project. Purportedly, Titor had been sent back to 1975 to retrieve an IBM 5100
IBM 5100
The IBM 5100 Portable Computer was a portable computer introduced in September 1975, six years before the IBM PC. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP that was developed at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. In January 1978 IBM announced the IBM 5110, its larger cousin,...
computer which he said was needed to "debug" various legacy computer programs in 2036; a reference to the UNIX
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
2038 problem. The 5100 runs the APL and BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
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
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease or CJD is a degenerative neurological disorder that is incurable and invariably fatal. CJD is at times called a human form of mad cow disease, given that bovine spongiform encephalopathy is believed to be the cause of variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans.CJD...
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 mysteries such as UFOs (which remained unexplained in his time). Titor suggested that UFOs and Extra-terrestrials might be travelers from much further into the future than his own time, with superior time machines.
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 manifoldManifoldIn mathematics , a manifold is a topological space that on a small enough scale resembles the Euclidean space of a specific dimension, called the dimension of the manifold....
to alter mass and gravity micro singularitiesGravitational singularityA gravitational singularity or spacetime singularity is a location where the quantities that are used to measure the gravitational field become infinite in a way that does not depend on the coordinate system... - A cooling and X-rayX-rayX-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
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
Chevrolet Corvette
The Chevrolet Corvette is a sports car by the Chevrolet division of General Motors that has been produced in six generations. The first model, a convertible, was designed by Harley Earl and introduced at the GM Motorama in 1953 as a concept show car. Myron Scott is credited for naming the car after...
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
Many-worlds interpretation
The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction, but denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an...
, 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
Grandfather paradox
The grandfather paradox is a proposed paradox of time travel first described by the science fiction writer René Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent . The paradox is this: suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveler's...
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 theoryMany-worlds interpretationThe many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction, but denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an...
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%.
Predictions
Although Titor repeatedly stated that his posts were not predictions of the future for thisRealization (probability)
In probability and statistics, a realization, or observed value, of a random variable is the value that is actually observed . The random variable itself should be thought of as the process how the observation comes about...
timeline, history since 2004
Contemporary history
Contemporary history describes the period timeframe that is without any intervening time closely connected to the present and is a certain perspective of modern history. The term "contemporary history" has been in use at least by the early 19th century. In the widest context of this use,...
has been compared to his reports, as prediction
Prediction
A prediction or forecast is a statement about the way things will happen in the future, often but not always based on experience or knowledge...
s would be:
The most immediate of Titor's predictions was of an upcoming civil war
Second American Revolution
The first American Revolution spanned from 1775 to 1783, after which the United States received recognition of independence by and from the Kingdom of Great Britain...
in the United States having to do with "order and rights". He described it as beginning in 2004, with civil unrest surrounding the presidential election of that year
United States presidential election, 2004
The United States presidential election of 2004 was the United States' 55th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 2004. Republican Party candidate and incumbent President George W. Bush defeated Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, the then-junior U.S. Senator...
. This civil conflict that he characterizes as "having a Waco
Waco Siege
The Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, and ended violently 50 days later on April 19. The siege began when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located east-northeast of Waco,...
type event every month that steadily gets worse" will be "pretty much at everyone's doorstep" 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
World War III
World War III denotes a successor to World War II that would be on a global scale, with common speculation that it would be likely nuclear and devastating in nature....
:
In 2015, RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
launches a nuclear strike against the major cities in the United States (which is the "other side" of the civil war from my perspective), ChinaChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, and EuropeEuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. 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 UnionEuropean UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
and China were also destroyed.
Titor refers to the exchange as N Day. Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
are specifically mentioned as being hit. After the war, Omaha
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha is the largest city in the state of Nebraska, United States, and is the county seat of Douglas County. It is located in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of the mouth of the Platte River...
, Nebraska
Nebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
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" but also points to the present conflict between Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
s and Jews as not a causation, but rather a milestone that precedes a World War III.
Titor, in his posts, repeatedly said that he doesnt care at all if anyone believes him, since he said that was not his purpose.
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 universeMultiverse
The multiverse is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes that together comprise all of reality.Multiverse may also refer to:-In fiction:* Multiverse , the fictional multiverse used by DC Comics...
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
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
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 hole
Black hole
A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing, not even light, can escape. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that...
s being created by CERN (a recurring theme, also ascribed to Fermilab
Fermilab
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory , located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics...
and Brookhaven
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory , is a United States national laboratory located in Upton, New York on Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base...
at various times) 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." The politically uneventful staging of the 2006 Winter Olympics
2006 Winter Olympics
The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XX Olympic Winter Games, was a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Turin, Italy from February 10, 2006, through February 26, 2006. This marked the second time Italy hosted the Olympic Winter Games, the first being the VII Olympic Winter...
, the 2008 Summer Olympics
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 to August 24, 2008. A total of 11,028 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees competed in 28 sports and 302 events...
, and the 2010 Winter Olympics
2010 Winter Olympics
The 2010 Winter Olympics, officially the XXI Olympic Winter Games or the 21st Winter Olympics, were a major international multi-sport event held from February 12–28, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with some events held in the suburbs of Richmond, West Vancouver and the University...
refute this claim.
Problems with the Technology
In the context of the demonstration image provided by John Titor, the laser pointerLaser pointer
A laser pointer or laser pen is a small portable device with a power source and a laser emitting a very narrow coherent low-powered beam of visible light, intended to be used to highlight something of interest by illuminating it with a small bright spot of colored light...
'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
Gradient
In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar field is a vector field that points in the direction of the greatest rate of increase of the scalar field, and whose magnitude is the greatest rate of change....
, but it does not. Some have speculated the "beam" is an optical fiber
Optical fiber
An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...
.
Titor claimed that he was sent back to obtain an IBM 5100
IBM 5100
The IBM 5100 Portable Computer was a portable computer introduced in September 1975, six years before the IBM PC. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP that was developed at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. In January 1978 IBM announced the IBM 5110, its larger cousin,...
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
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
and debug mainframe systems were correct. Supporters state that this information was not publicly available in 2000 or 2001 when Titor made his declaration, and Titor himself stated that this feature was "discovered" as late as 2036 when Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, 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
Year 2038 problem
The year 2038 problem may cause some computer software to fail at some point near the year 2038...
due to 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
integer limitations.
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. 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
Retrocomputing
Retrocomputing is the use of early computer hardware and software today. Retrocomputing is usually classed as a hobby and recreation rather than a practical application of technology; enthusiasts often collect rare and valuable hardware and software for sentimental reasons...
.
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.
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, BabylonAlas, Babylon
Alas, Babylon is a 1959 novel by American writer Pat Frank . It was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and remains popular fifty years after it was first published...
. 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
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
(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 card
Credit card
A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...
s, despite his statement that centralized banking no longer exists (this is either an inconsistency or implies the rise of private currencies
Private currency
A private currency is a currency issued by a private organization. It is often contrasted with fiat currency issued by governments or central banks. In many countries, the issue of private paper currencies is severely restricted by law....
). 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
Swiss dinar
Swiss dinar is a term used to describe the Iraqi currency in circulation prior to the 1990 Gulf War with the Coalition Forces. The reason for the adjective "Swiss" is unknown, but there are two possible explanations. The first is that the printing plates for the currency came from Switzerland,...
making the currency worthless.
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
Coast to Coast AM
Coast to Coast AM is a North American late-night syndicated radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics, but most frequently ones that relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories. It was created by Art Bell and is distributed by Premiere Radio Networks. The program currently...
. 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..."
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."
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. 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, he discovered that there was a company that was called the John Titor Foundation. The John Titor Foundation is a for-profit Florida LLC that was formed September 16, 2003. It had no office, and it only had a rented post box with the address PMB 237, 7862 W IRLO BRONSON HWY, KISSIMMEE FL 34747; no tapes, recordings, or evidence of Titor were found; and only Larry Haber, the CEO of the John Titor Foundation and an entertainment lawyer in Celebration Florida, confirmed his existence. Lynch's conclusion is that John Titor may be John Rick Haber, a computer expert who is 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 2006, John Titor's "C204 Time Travel Theory" was patented http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20060073976.pdf with the same diagram outlined in John's original story.
- In the 2009 Japanese visual novelVisual novelA is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
, novelNovelA novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
, mangaMangaManga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
, and animeAnimeis the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series, Steins;GateSteins;Gateis a Japanese visual novel developed by 5pb. and Nitroplus, and was released on October 15, 2009 for the Xbox 360. This is the two companies' second time collaborating together after Chaos;Head. A port to the Windows operating system on the PC was released on August 26, 2010 and a port for Sony's...
, the legend of John Titor, the IBM 5100IBM 5100The IBM 5100 Portable Computer was a portable computer introduced in September 1975, six years before the IBM PC. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP that was developed at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. In January 1978 IBM announced the IBM 5110, its larger cousin,...
, the organization CERNCERNThe European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
, and a character using his name as a pseudonymPseudonymA pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
, play vital roles in the story.