The Mystery Of John Titor: The Legendary Time Traveler From 2036

Science fiction will often employ time travel to generate breathtaking movies, TV-series, and incredible novels based on this concept.

From H.G Wells, who popularized time travel in the 19th century, and Doctor Who (the six-decade long-standing British TV-Series), to the Terminator franchise and “12 Monkeys”, time travel has always been a fascinating topic for the sci-fi audience.

With the rise of the internet, we witnessed numerous hoaxes with supposed time traveler cases.

However, within the vast number of low-effort hoaxes, we find a few stories with shockingly straightforward elements and confidential details.

We charge our flux capacitor and examine the case of a “possible” time traveler with the alias John Titor, an early internet urban legend who even laid the foundations for one of the top anime franchises of all time!

John Titor — A Legendary Time Traveller

John Titor was a fictional character who appeared in forums and bulletin boards in early 2000, producing a captivating mystery involving time travel, CERN, and an early IBM computer model.

Reality or not (it was a hoax), the story of John Titor unfolds with each of his writings, inducing vast interest and maintaining a significant effect even 22 years later.

The anime series “Steins;Gate” (2011–2015), which became one of the most successful anime series of all time, was influenced and based on the John Titor story and included various parts of this story.

The story begins with the Time Travel Institute forum, where a new user under the alias of John Titor published his first post.

In this post, John Titor explained he was a time traveler from 2036! He declared he was a selected agent that traveled back in time to obtain a specific model of an IBM computer and bring it back to 2036.

John Titor also painted a dystopic scenario for the future (which is now the past), as in his timeline (worldline according to Titor), disorder, corruption, and a nuclear war tore the world apart.

The IBM 5100 Model

The story sounds absurd already, but the tale turns interesting shortly.

The computer model that Titor was seeking was a 1975 IBM 5100.

This model (according to Titor) upholds capabilities that were suppressed by IBM in the 70s, fearing that competition could use them to their advantage.

We need the system to “debug” various legacy computer programs in 2036. UNIX has a problem in 2038.

-John Titor

Not wanting to get technical, Titor explained this IBM model was the only one able to debug “legacy computer programs”, and no such technology existed in 2036.

His timeline depended on this mission to bring this IBM model back to the future.

It seemed like an impressive sci-fi scenario, although here’s the detail that made this mysterious figure with the alias John Titor reach legendary status:

John Titor’s story wasn’t entirely fictional but established on concepts computer scientists encountered since the 90s.

We need the system to “debug” various legacy computer programs in 2036. UNIX has a problem in 2038.

– John Titor

The mention of debugging legacy computer programs is a reference to the UNIX year 2038 problem or Y2k38, a formatting bug similar to the Y2K bug. Scientists expect this time-format bug to occur in 2038.

This information was valid and also confidential at that time.

The IBM 5100 model supported both BASIC and APL programming languages.

Bob Dubke, who was one of the designers of the IBM 5100 model, explained how this fact was hidden “because of worries about how [IBM’s] competition might use it.” (Source: ComputerMystery).

Apparently, John Titor wasn’t a typical internet troll randomly saying things to impress but used information not known to the public to enhance his story.

Interest in John Titor kept rising since he was exemplifying technical issues that almost nobody but a few tech experts in the computing field of the time understood.

If he was not a time traveler from 2036, he was someone with a solid interest in computers since the 70s, and possibly involved with the programming and creation of such computer models, like the IBM 5100.

In a series of forum posts between 2000 and 2001, John Titor kept responding to comments and publishing relevant information.

His purpose was a futile attempt to turn things around for our timeline

Apparently, he thought there was a slight chance he could turn things around for our timeline. Still, Titor would have to deliver convincing arguments and evidence to gain credibility and back his extraordinary claims.

One way to do it would be by catching the attention of the most intelligent people employed in the technology field, and he did exactly that.

Although, how would anyone explain himself in his position?

When you try to force something, it just won’t work.

He knew that probably nobody was going to believe him, and this was a futile attempt, thus he began with his first forum post like this:

“Perhaps it would be better if you just considered me a fraud.”

Reverse psychology works way more than often. We might not expect a hoax to begin like that, however, this is not a formal way to introduce a shocking revelation but an unnecessary statement. In reality, anyone using such a sentence knows it does not dispel criticism or reduce suspicions.

Titor's Claims

Titor made several extraordinary claims:

• He was a time traveler from 2036.
• In his “worldline”, he was an American soldier based in Tampa, Florida.
• The government assigned him to the time-travel program and initially planned to send him to 1975, the year the IBM 5100 was released.
• He was assigned to retrieve that particular IBM model (for the aforementioned reasons).
• His grandfather was involved with the creation of the IBM 5100 model.
• He traveled in 2000 for personal (family) reasons.
• Claimed that the “Everett–Wheeler model of quantum physics” was correct (many-worlds interpretation) to back his time-traveling story.
• He explained how time travel works and described his time machine with a drawing

John Titor’s Time Machine

“My ‘time’ machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid.”

January 27, 2001 (source)

Titor described in detail his time machine in many posts using terms that probably don’t exist (at least not yet) in science, but some were used in science fiction.

Titor described his 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 of the micro singularities

- A cooling and X-ray venting system

- Gravity sensors, or a variable gravity lock (VGL system)

- Four main cesium clocks

- Three main computer units

According to the posts, the device was installed in the rear of a 1966 Chevrolet Corvette convertible.

(Wikipedia)

He also shared several images of the vehicle he transformed into a time-traveling machine:

Predictions

John Titor invoked the many-worlds interpretation, a theory that generates more confusion rather than explaining how time travel to the past might theoretically work.

According to this theory, events in our timeline would not proceed as in his own, since, after traveling back in time, he created a new timeline, a new independent world. The paradox, though, is not just about visiting the past and killing a direct ancestor to cut the timeline from existing, but just by visiting the past, the timeline gets altered instantly.

In the end, this theory can only apply if an infinite number of different timelines (parallel worlds perhaps) exist.

But, this gets too complicated to justify even in science fiction, and we witnessed how several movies and TV series struggled with the concept of the many-worlds interpretation and lost their appeal.

Titor’s predictions included:

• A civil war in the US was to begin in 2005. Civil unrest supposedly engulfed the United States during the 2005 presidential elections (although in 2005, only off-year elections were held).
• Claims that several “Waco” types of events generated the civil unrest
• The US civil war ended in 2015 with the split of the US into four regions, and a brief WWIII also occurred.
• By 2036, human technology was in peril from an unfixable UNIX time-out error

If we are to believe the story of John Titor, then his impact created a new timeline where the blight events he described didn’t happen.

Perhaps because of his warning or because of just his presence, he altered the future.

However, the story is regarded as a hoax, with investigators concluding Larry Haber and his brother Morey Haber behind Titor’s inception.

Closing Thoughts

Most of us encountered the concept of time travel with the famous Delorean automobile, which Doc Brown and Marty McFly used to travel “Back To the Future”.

Theoretically, time travel is possible, and Albert Einstein concluded that with the Theory of Relativity, although the concept is established on the hypothesis wormholes exist, something that we have not been able to verify.

Iconic scientist Steven Hawking pulled a party and invited time travelers to the University of Cambridge in 2009. Apparently, only Hawking attended the party, and no time traveler joined!

Titor stopped publishing on forums in March 2001, but the mystery kept growing, especially as the Japanese manga and anime series Steins;Gate was released and achieved high popularity among fans.

It deserves a place as one of the top time traveler mysteries/stories ever told. John Titor was a remarkable hoax that achieved legendary status.

In the extraordinary possibility, this was all real, John Titor possibly saved our timeline from dystopic conditions.

Originally published at Medium on my profile: Ex Cathedra

External content published in this article is used for research purposes and falls within the guidelines of fair use. No copyright infringement intended. If you are, or represent, the copyright owner of images used in this article, and have an issue with the use of said material, please notify me.

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