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Travel back in time to October 2000, a time when the world’s population of 6.5 billion lived with little fear of global terrorism. Enter a forum poster, TimeTravel_0, alleging he was US army traveller from 2036, a world in which terrorism and civil war has left 3 billion dead.

John Titor

TimeTravel_0, who later referred to himself as John Titor, began posting on internet forums and engaging in chat conversations about time travel, making short posts that typically centred around what would be required to make a time travelling machine.

Later he changed his name to John Titor in order to post on the Art Bell BBS forums which required registration. He confirmed that ‘John Titor’ was a real name but never whether it was his own or not. After a while Titor began to reveal more of himself, eventually leading to the revelation that he was a time traveller who had originally been sent back to 1975 to acquire an IBM5100 computer to enable the military to debug legacy systems still used in 2036.

Titor then revealed that he was visiting 2000 for personal reasons, visiting members of his family and collecting pictures that were lost in a civil war in the year 2015. Titor then claimed in 2001 that he was returning to his own time. The forum posts stopped and never resumed.

Some Predictions Made By Titor

During his time posting, John Titor made various predictions or, should I say, revelations as to what had already happened from the perspective of his own timeline -

• Instances of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD or ‘mad cow‘ disease) would increase.
• Almost half the world’s population would perish in World War Three in 2015
• The 2004 Olympics would be the last
• Civil war would start in America around the time of the 2004 presidential election, due to erosion of freedoms

In the case of CJD, Titor’s prediction is partially correct as CJD certainly does appear to be a growing problem in this day and age. The Olympics claim was obviously wrong though as the 2006 Winter Olympics were successfully held.

As for the other two, well freedoms have been eroded, but no civil war has occurred in America… yet, and WWIII may or may not begin in 2015. Skeptics make a point of highlighting a prediction that Titor didn’t make - there was never any mention of September the 11th in any of his posts.

The Time Machine

Titor, over the period he was posting, gave information about his time machine, including parts of the operating manual and photographs. The main components of his time machine, he said, were -

• Three supercomputers
• Gravity sensors
• An X-ray based cooling and venting system
• Four caesium clocks
• Two magnetic housing units for the dual micro singularities
• An electron injection manifold, used to alter the gravity and mass micro singularities

In his forum posts Titor stated that the device was originally installed in a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette and then later re-fitted into a 1987 4-wheel drive truck.

Though Titor said that UFOs were still largely unexplained in 2036, it was his belief that aliens were actually humans from further into the future, using far more advanced and accurate versions of his time travelling machine in order to return to the past for other future time missions of their own.

Conclusion

Whatever views you may have on the authenticity of John Titor and the possibility of time travel either now, or in the future, it certainly makes entertaining reading.

Many of Titor’s predictions seem to have failed to have come true but, as with any good hoaxer (if that is what he is), there is a fallback to help perpetuate the story - Titor claimed that the future exists in many different formats and multiple universes, thereby making it possible that ‘reality’ can be altered in one such ‘world’ whilst continuing as expected in another - talk about a great get out jail free card!

Supporters of Titor also claim that his failed prediction about the Olympics was because he was referring to the summer games and not the winter ones. Additionally, they suggest that civil war in America since 2004 is not evident as it is in fact slowly growing in momentum and that historians will later point to that year as being the beginnings of bigger things yet to come.

Personally, I think that someone with an advanced knowledge of retro-computing and physics has had a good laugh at those he managed to fool with some very clever forum posts.

What do you think - was John Titor a time traveller from a post-nuclear 2036 or a master hoaxer?