John Taylor from the future. "Time Travelers" tells about a terrible future. Nobody believes them. Faxes to Arthur Bell

The name John Titor first appeared on the Time Travel Institute forum in November 2000, however, it was then that he signed up as TimeTravel_0, and soon he gave his “name” - John Titor. He said about himself that he is a soldier from the future, from 2036, and in his time our world has already been destroyed by some computer virus. So, the time traveler's mission is to return to the distant 1975 and destroy the IBM 5100 computer in order to correct the deplorable future of the planet.

The forum participants enthusiastically questioned the time traveler, asking him questions about the near future, and Titor willingly answered, not forgetting to remind that reality is not the same for everyone, and his reality does not necessarily coincide with others. Be that as it may, he simply aroused enormous interest in his person, and his predictions for the near future enjoyed great interest and were discussed in the widest possible way.

Thus, he, in particular, predicted the war in Iraq, although very vaguely. However, some of the predictions did not come true at all. Thus, John Titor said that in the future the United States will be divided into several regions, and as a result will be subjected to a nuclear attack.

He told about himself that he got to the year 2000 by accident, deciding to stop by at this time for personal reasons - to see his family, collect some photographs. In reality, his ultimate goal is 1975.

So, John Titor's predictions included a civil war in the United States, a nuclear attack, a war in Iraq, the transfer of the US capital to Nebraska, and even a vague hint of World War III.

Several times Titor described the time machine in great detail, actively using the technical characteristics of the device, and even, they say, presented a very fuzzy photograph of it.

In March 2001, John Titor wrote his last post on the Internet and disappeared without a trace and forever.

Several private investigations were later undertaken, during which no information was found about a man named John Titor. There was no evidence of his family, and only one person, lawyer Larry Haber, confirmed his possible existence.

Best of the day

Today, everything that concerns John Titor, time traveler and soldier from the future, is usually mentioned with a grain of salt. But more than ten years ago, many, passionate about the topic of the future, extraterrestrial civilizations and other things, reacted to it with the most lively interest. John Titor has remained both a legend on the internet and a mystery. Many call him a hoaxer and even a charlatan, others respect the brilliant idea of this certainly interesting man with extraordinary imagination and broad knowledge of history, technology, astrology and space sciences.

Today we're going to delve into the internet legend of John Titor, who allegedly came from the future and stopped by in the year 2000 to post a few posts on forums. This, friends, is actually the beginning and end of the story. However, we are skeptical and want to know more. Something can be learned from rumors and legends, even in the absence of any connection to history. The very fact of the origin of the legend is a question and the weaker the evidence, the greater the temptation to dismiss it. This is irresponsible and we will turn our attention to time traveler John Titor.

John Titor's first acquaintance with the general public, in 1998, was due to several messages on the radio "Coast to Coast", which broadcast programs about paranormal phenomena. Posing as a time traveler from 2036, he warned of a global computer system failure at midnight on December 31, 1999, which would cause famine, frost and military conflicts. John Titor next appeared in 2000, on a forum called the Time Travel Institute. His nickname was TimeTravel_0. Under the same name, on the “From Coast to Coast” forum, a prediction was posted about the beginning of the civil war in the United States in 2004, which would disintegrate the country into 5 regions and result in the Third World War, continuing until 2015. Among John Titor's predictions is the Large Hadron Collider, built by that time. So the time traveler's prediction was that the LHC would lead to the creation of small black holes. Without exception, all of John Titor's predictions did not come true.

According to John Titor, he came on a military mission and was sent to 1975 from 2036. The main task was to breathe life into the IBM 5100 computer, one of the early models of portable computers with a 5-inch black and white CRT screen. The Time Traveler claimed that there was a need to translate the ancestral code. Further, as he moved through the years, he decided to stop for several years in 1998. John Titor made his movements in a car with a built-in time machine. It should be noted that this method of traveling is not new; the 1985 film “Back to the Future” is well known to the public. It cannot be ruled out that the prankster chose this old-fashioned method of time travel, wanting to play a prank on forum visitors.

Who was John Titor, the "time traveler" who came from 2036 to warn us of a nuclear war?

As the world celebrates Back to the Future Day, it has forgotten the unknown man whose 2001 internet postings might just have saved humanity.

Since John Titor remained active on the forum even after the year 2000 came to show the value of his prophecies, he had to explain the theory of parallel universes. What happened in one universe by 2036, according to John Titor, will not necessarily happen in a parallel one. Thus, events that happened by 2036 in his universe will not necessarily happen in ours. This is called a special condition. A claim of unverifiable force majeure grants immunity to all claims made by the time traveler.

Now a skeptic can discover the reason why John Titor became famous in Internet forums. Anyone can easily register and say whatever they want. You can pretend to be Mickey Mouse, Napoleon, or a time traveler from the future. People also sometimes take over the initiative, and there is no guarantee that only one person is writing on behalf of John Titor. Likewise, there is no guarantee that calls and faxes to radios are not sent by stupid pranksters. This happens several times every day.

John Titor differs from anonymous posts in his predictions of the future, which are easily verifiable over time. All the predictions turned out to be fake, that is, exactly what you would expect from a random chatterbox.

Why did John Titor's story become famous? Why does it exist?

The joker managed to gain fame as a time traveler thanks to the development of the Internet and the Coast to Coast radio station, which is very friendly to such fiction and unverified facts. Nowadays, the density of information on the Internet is much higher, and there are more “time travelers” and other pranksters. It is now much more difficult to gain fame for John Titor.

However, note that popular stories appear on the Internet almost daily. Getting to the top today is much more difficult than it was back in 1998, but inventions that win the fame lottery appear regularly. If we weren't talking about John Titor, we'd be talking about something else. Our time traveler is popular because he became one of those who gained popularity.

The story of John Titor has elements that work in any legend. The possibility of time travel attracts any of us. The author, like others, would like to experience this. We really want time travel to be possible.

Another element is distrust of the government: Civil war, martial law, struggle for respect for freedoms and democracy. Since the conspiracy theory has been alive, many would like to witness these events. There seems to be a relationship between conspiracy theorists and regulars on Internet forums. John Titor therefore represents many popular opinions.

To top it off, he has a time machine built into his sports car. Who wouldn't like this?

According to the author, connoisseurs of interesting stories should not like time traveler John Titor. The author was asked many questions about this traveler, which forced him to study the materials. There was no limit to surprise when it turned out how insignificant the information was. A number of people believe in John Titor. The majority, who are familiar with Internet pranks, simply mock the time traveler. When thinking about whether the story deserved an article, the author was not concerned with the question of its veracity. It would be more interesting to understand how we determine whether a paranormal event is worth our attention.

Strictly speaking, nothing should be rejected without careful study. On the other hand, we are busy people and do not have time to consider in detail everything that surrounds us. A line must be drawn between what is worthy of attention and what is not. The author believes that John Titor's time travel story is beyond the imaginary line.

One of the pleasures of research is discovery. If someone posts stupid messages on forums, maintaining them for years, this does not add value and truthfulness to the information posted. There is no room for discovery here, unlike many other legends that grew out of real events.

John Titor enthusiasts tried to approach it from the other direction. In 2008, Italian television planned a show in search of the real John Titor, the one who hides under this name. Very quickly they realized that this would be a boring program and switched to another topic.

The author avoids this path and, when choosing a topic, recommends rejecting stories beyond the bounds of common sense, when, by all indications, we are dealing with fantasy or a practical joke. There are so many interesting and worthy things around us. Time travel? John Titor joke? Don't waste your time.

Who claimed to have come from the future. The case is funny, but far from isolated. Moreover, many of these “time travelers” were not arrested or dragged to a psychiatric hospital, but they listened to them and believed almost every word. However, it was not without oddities and outright hoaxes. We decided to recall several high-profile and surprising cases related to chrononauts.

Soldier from 2036
John Titor

Perhaps the most famous “time traveler”, who caused an extraordinary stir, forcing even convinced skeptics to think about his words. No one had ever seen Titor himself - John preferred to communicate on the Internet. According to legend, Titor arrived from 2036, when the world lay in ruins after the invasion of a computer virus, World War III and a whole string of local conflicts. Titor's future looks like something out of a cyberpunk novel from the mid-1980s to early 1990s: high digital technologies coexist with poverty and decline in other areas, half the world has been destroyed by nuclear strikes, and the political map is not at all similar to the current one.

John Titor time machine diagram

Titor preferred to speak in half-hints, without naming specific dates and names, referring to “non-interference” in the affairs of the past. Nevertheless, “non-interference” did not work out, and he poured out a lot of information on his grateful readers: in addition to rather transparent hints, he, for example, explained in detail the structure of a time machine and the principle of chronotravel.

However, in terms of the number of prophecies that came true, Titor is close to Nostradamus, however, in terms of their quality, he can also compete with the famous predictor: everything is quite vague and can be explained by the forecast of a person who more or less understands the political situation of that time. In the main, Titor’s predictions did not come true: in 2004–2005, there were no mass riots in the United States that would have led to a new civil war and split the country into several separate states. But it was on this ridge that the entire history of Titor was based. However, in 2015 the Third World War should break out, judging by the words of the chrononaut. True, Titor himself claims that the picture of the future that he painted is characteristic of the world in which he lives: time travel, according to Titor, involves moving from one parallel reality of the multiverse to another.

Titor's Mission The idea was to go back to 1975 and get an IBM 5100 computer, which had a hidden feature that could patch "old UNIX-based systems, even before the advent of APL and Basic." In 2000, when his first posts appeared on the Time Travel Institute forum, John stopped by “for personal reasons”: to see his family and... himself at the age of two. Doc Brown cries tears of blood.

Håkan Nordqvist and Håkan Nordqvist from the future

Swede Håkan Nordqvist came home in 2006 and saw that the kitchen floor was flooded with water. Without thinking twice, he took out the tools and reached into the cabinet under the sink to fix the leak. Further, according to Hokan, the space of the closet suddenly expanded, and light appeared ahead. Without blinking an eye, the Swede climbed towards the light and... crawled out from under the sink in his house, but 36 years later. At the same time, Nordqvist claims, he managed not only to meet with his 72-year-old self, but also to film video confirmation. It is difficult to judge the similarity of the people he captured: Nordqvist took a strategically correct position with his back to the sun. However, some similarities between men are observed, except that the elderly man is slightly taller than Nordqvist, and in the period from 36 to 72 years old people usually do not grow. There is one more “evidence” - identical tattoos, but it is quite difficult to call this convincing evidence.

Billy Meyer and dinosaur photography

Swiss chrononaut Billy Meyer is famous not only for time travel, but also for close contacts with representatives of extraterrestrial intelligence. It was they, according to Billy, who helped him go back in time, where he took several photographs. True, his most famous photograph, depicting a pterodactyl, turned out to be a very out-of-focus shot of an illustration from the book “Life Before Man,” and the photo with alien dancers turned out to be a snapshot of the TV screen on which the Dean Martin show was shown. Subsequently, the Swiss wife confirmed that all the evidence of his words were fakes and she personally took part in their production.

Future Millionaire Andrew Karlssin

In 2002, the FBI conducted an operation to detain 44-year-old Andrew Karlsin, who was amazingly lucky in stock transactions. As the agents assumed, Karlsin entered into a criminal conspiracy with managers of companies trading shares, and with the help of insider information received from them, received very good income.

Having started playing with $800 in his pocket, Andrew managed to increase his fortune to $350 million in two weeks, making only 126 transactions. This is what brought him to the attention of the US Securities Market Commission and then the FBI.

The arrested person himself denied the existence of a conspiracy with representatives of the companies, instead stating that he arrived from the future - from 2256, where, of course, everything is known about how stock quotes fluctuated in 2002.

As soon as the story penetrated the newspapers, a whole hysteria began around Karlsin’s story. Someone claimed that such a person never existed before 2002; there is no mention of him in databases. Stock brokers insisted that even with insider information, it was impossible to earn so much money in such a short time. True, all these people did not take into account one thing: the first mention of the time traveler appeared on the pages of Weekly World News - a tabloid famous for the most absurd falsehoods and fabrications.

Chronovisor of Holy Father Pellegrino Ernetti

Benedictine monk, specialist in archaic music, famous exorcist and quantum physicist Marcello Pellegrino Ernetti became known to the whole world in a completely different capacity. Unlike our other heroes, he did not claim that he came from the future or the past, and what he described was quite difficult to call a journey. Ernetti claimed that he had invented a device - a chronovisor - that made it possible to look into any point in time and see the events that took place there.

As Ernetti himself said, he was prompted to create such a device by his passion for ancient music, or more precisely, for the ancient Roman opera “Fiesta,” the score of which was lost, but the original sound of which the holy father passionately wanted to hear.

It is interesting that Ernetti himself mentioned the chronovisor only once, after which he did not mention this device in any of his works. But Ernetti’s assistant and confidant, Father Francois Brun, spoke willingly and a lot about this device and even wrote a book dedicated to this story.

According to Bruhn, the operation of the chronovisor was based on the theory that there are no solid particles in the world, and all phenomena are waves, which, in fact, are the very Word that, according to the Bible, was in the beginning of everything. Having learned to read these waves, it was possible to call up from the past any event that had ever happened. The result of the chronovisor's work, according to Brun, looked like a three-dimensional black and white hologram, but taking into account new technologies, it was possible to add color.

In order to check the operation of the device and make sure of its accuracy, the holy fathers first looked into the recent past, watching the speech of Benito Mussolini. Then we moved on, seeing Napoleon, Cicero's speech and, ultimately, the crucifixion of Christ.

Soon after this, the device was dismantled, as it carried a potential threat: the ability to look into any event of the past could seriously undermine the current power of both political and religious structures. Moreover, Bruhn argues, the chronovisor could be configured to capture the thoughts of any person, and in unscrupulous hands this would lead to the establishment of a worldwide dictatorship.

However, no convincing evidence of the existence of the chronovisor has ever been presented to the general public. The text of “Fiesta” was recognized as a stylization composed by Ernetti himself, photographs of Jesus Christ, allegedly taken with the help of the device, turned out to be a fake, and not the most skillful one - they looked very much like a sculpture by wood carver Lorenzo Valera, and the very principle of operation of the device, which allows to see the events of the past on television was described in the 1947 work of science fiction writer Thomas Sherred “The Attempt.”

Marcello Pellegrino Ernetti

Photo of Jesus Christ

I want to believe

Why don’t chronotourists, who arrived in our time from the distant future on an excursion, fall right on our heads? Some explain this by saying that the time machine has not yet been invented, and time travel is impossible before the moment when it happens - a kind of defense mechanism of the Universe to prevent the occurrence of insoluble time paradoxes. Others argue that traveling into the past is impossible: whatever happened, happened, the river of time flows only in one direction - into the future. The most pragmatically minded people generally consider time travel to be a fairy tale like Star Wars, the American landing on the moon and other gremlins. However, if we do not see chronotourists, this does not mean that they do not exist.

One of the most famous time travelers was named John Titor. He wasn't a chronotourist, he was a soldier from the future, just like Kyle Reese from The Terminator. Titor arrived from 2036 in our time to find an IBM 5100 computer running on a unique software code that could solve the 2038 Problem for UNIX systems. In addition, in 2015, World War III will break out, killing about 3 billion people, the United States will disintegrate into five parts, and the world will cease to exist as we know it.

The John Titor Story

Even after all these years, there is still debate about when exactly this story began. The starting point was November 2, 2000, when someone under the nickname TimeTravel_0 began posting on the Time Travel Institute forum. At first, the conversation was only about the basic principles of time travel and some technical details of creating a time machine. The name John Titor first appears on the forum of American radio host Arthur Bell, creator of the paranormal show Coast to Coast AM, broadcast in the USA and Canada. Gradually, John Titor begins to make predictions about the future. More and more people joined the discussion, asked questions about time travel, asked why he was here, were interested in the technologies necessary to create a time machine and, of course, future events full of wars and disasters. Titor's last post was dated March 21, 2001, where he claimed to be going back to 2036. Since then, John has never appeared online again.

Facts about John Titor.

John Titor was born in 1998
In 2036, Titor and his family live in Tampa, Florida.
Titor listens to classical music and old rock and roll
Titor didn't know if anyone believed him in 2001
In addition to Titor, his unit includes 7 more time travelers who perform various missions from the 60s to the 80s
Titor could not communicate from 2001 with his native timeline in 2036
Titor's true passion is sailing

John Titor's unit emblem

John Titor's theory of time travel

Titor argued that the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) theory, formulated by American physicist Hugh Everett in 1957, is correct. According to his conclusions, every event has an infinite number of versions, determined by a complex world function that can describe the universe in countless ways, at the same time, uncertainty (remember a simultaneously living and dead cat in a box?) does not arise, since it is impossible to observe the universe from outside its boundaries . The MMI should not be confused with the Multiverse, which consists of a collection of an infinite number of parallel worlds. In Everett's theory, the world exists in a single copy, it is simply described in different ways. Titor argued that based on this, the grandfather paradox is absurd, he can kill his “own” grandfather, but it will be a “different” grandfather, that is, this will not prevent Titor’s birth and the paradox will not arise.

Time Machine

You can look at the drawings and diagrams of John Titor's time machine and, if you wish, build your own copy to go back to the future.

Let's skip the technical details and focus on the sensations of a time traveler, which Titor talked about in some detail in his posts.

After loading the coordinates into the system, the time machine begins to accelerate. A beep and flashing light will begin the countdown and you must ensure that you are securely seated in your seat. You almost immediately find yourself inside the gravitational field generated by the machine. It's like the jerk you'd get if you were going up quickly in an elevator. When the car accelerates to 100%, the force of gravity increases. Its strength is directly proportional to how far you are directly from the device. There are no serious side effects, but it is better not to eat anything before going back in time.

You will not see any flashes or bright lights, from the outside it will look like light rays are going around the car. Your eyes should be protected with dark glasses as there will be a flash of intense ultraviolet radiation.

Titor describes what follows as “like driving under a rainbow, and then darkness comes until the very end.” Then you hear the sound characteristic of a voltage drop and a slight crackling sound of static electricity.

Details of some predictions

All of the self-proclaimed time traveler's posts were written before the events of September 11, the crash of the space shuttle Columbia and the start of the Second Iraq War. Many of Titor's followers believe that he knew about these events, but did not speak about them directly, only dropping hints and giving hints. John Titor answered a huge number of questions and is believed to have foreseen many of the events that actually happened later. The most important thing in his predictions was that he proclaimed the truth of the MWI with an infinite number of different options for the development of the same event, where, under the influence of our actions, the universe can “transition” from one line to another. Thus, the future can be changed, moreover, it has already changed under the influence of John Titor, which means that not all of his predictions will come true. Titor himself claimed that his universe differs from ours by 1-2%, but the longer he is here, the greater the differences become.

Some John Titor predictions and answers to questions about 2036:

AIDS is still not defeated, and progress is being made in cancer treatment.
Status: unknown

CERN will discover “strange things” through high-energy physics experiments.
Status: the hysteria around the collider has died down a little, the “God Particle” has been found

Printed books are still being published.
Status: unknown

“Movies” and “TV” still exist, but are segmented throughout the web. Many people make their own “shows”.
Status: There is some trend towards execution. Everyone is now their own video blogger.

There will be some natural disasters in 2012. It won't be the end of the world.
Status: correct. “Sandy” passed, Europe was abnormally covered with snow, Venice and the Krasnodar region were flooded, but the world survived.

The US capital will be moved to Omaha, Nebraska.
Status: unknown

After 2004 the Olympic Games will not be held
Status: incorrect

The Chinese space program is developing rapidly.
Status: correct. In 2011, China launched its own orbital station, and already in 2012 the first manned flight took place.

Year 2000 (Y2K) was a terrible disaster that resulted in massive power outages and thousands of people dying on America's highways while trying to get to warmer places.
Status: incorrect. Issue 2000 was a well-executed marketing campaign.

Faxes to Arthur Bell

The last prediction was not made online, because Y2K had already passed without serious consequences, and Titor could not have known this. Some sources claim that this story began in 1998, when Arthur Bell received two faxes from John Titor. Full text of messages and .

Titor's adherents explain this inconsistency by saying that the future was changed. However, there is no reason to assume that the faxes and messages on the forums were sent by the same person. Moreover, there is no way to determine whether these faxes were actually sent in 1998, or if they were miraculously found after 2001, when the story gained popularity. Titor himself never commented on the existence of faxes, which serves as further proof of Bell’s rich imagination.

Influence on pop culture

The legend of John Titor most clearly manifested itself in the series of games, manga and anime Steins;Gate, in which John Titor is a soldier from the future who arrived in 2010 to find the IBN 5100 computer running on a unique program code, capable of decrypting SERN databases. an organization that in the future built a time machine and with its help gained world domination.

Hoaxes and legends have made their mark on popular culture before and have contributed to the development of unexpected tourist destinations in Scotland's Loch Ness and Roswell, New Mexico. However, the story of John Titor was a unique example of how an ordinary Internet discussion made it out of the clunky Internet 1.0 into the real world and merged into popular culture. Titor has appeared in the media, a book, a play, a manga, a visual novel, an anime, and even gave rise to patenting some of his theories about time travel. Legends are now born online, just as Gibson and Sterling predicted.

At the end of 2000, a man calling himself John Titor began publishing predictions for the near future on the Internet. John Titor claimed to have come... from the year 2036. It is still not known whether this was an ordinary prank, or whether aliens from the future can really make contact with us. However, such a case is not the only one...

Titor left messages on various websites and forums. Sometimes he took the pseudonym TimeTravel0. The prophecies made by this mysterious figure are quite gloomy. This man said that a civil war would break out in the United States, which would split the country into five regions with the capital in Omaha. In 2015, we will face the Third World War, which will result in the death of three billion people. And in 2036, a global virus will destroy the entire computer network, which will be a disaster for all humanity remaining on the planet.

John Titor told his readers that his mission is to return to 1975 and seize an IBM 5100 computer from there, which should contain programs to combat the future virus. In that case, how did Titor get to the year 2000? He really wanted to meet his three-year-old self, he explained. That is how old he was that year. Whether this enterprise was a success is unknown. As you know, the theory of time travel denies the possibility of meeting a loved one from the past...

Many, of course, reacted to Titor’s posts with skepticism. But there were also those who were interested in his information. For four months, Titor answered in great detail all the questions that curious people asked him. Moreover, he described the events of the future in a poetic style, like Nostradamus. Among other things, the mysterious stranger wrote that there are many realities and his own reality may not be related to ours, that is, the future in which he lives may not be related to our past and present.

However, he called for being prepared for a negative turn of events - in particular, learning to provide first aid and not eating beef, since in his reality a disease such as mad cow disease has become a serious threat to humanity.

Titor also spoke about some technical aspects of time travel and even posted on the Internet photographs of the device on which he allegedly arrived in the past, however, the pictures turned out to be not of very high quality. The last time Titor went online was on March 24, 2001, he gave his fans advice in case of the end of the world: “Take a gasoline can with you when you abandon your car on the side of the road.”

After that, he closed all his accounts and no one heard from him again until today. "The John Titor story is popular because some stories just get popular," says Brian Denning, a writer and producer who has specifically researched the Titor phenomenon.

In any case, no one has been able to refute the information given by Titor, and there is no information about who could be behind this pseudonym (if this name was a pseudonym).

“One of the keys to unlocking Titor,” writes someone under the name Temporal Recon, “is accepting the possibility that time travel may be true.” Recently, information has appeared about various paranormal phenomena associated with the Internet. So, several years ago, computer scientists drew attention to the ominous “black banner” that appears from time to time on one or another network page. “Clicking” on it does not lead anywhere, and after a while it disappears on its own.

At first, programmers feared that a new virus was disguised as a black banner. But then on those servers where the “glitch” was noticed, completely inexplicable things began to happen. Thus, physicist Michael Dodgenson from NASA reports: “When analyzing DNS servers, 102 links were found leading to non-existent resources, in other words, “to nowhere.” Moreover, all these links have a creation date of 2030-2070.” It turns out that the links lead to... sites of the future? Maybe the black banner is an Internet portal to another dimension? Perhaps researchers of anomalous phenomena should take an interest in this in more detail.