TIME TRAVEL TESTIMONY AND THE ‘JOHN TITOR’ FIASCO

Extract

Around 1998, internet postings began appearing under the alias ‘Timetravel_0’. This alias was later replaced by ‘John Titor’, and it's as such I'll designate the posts' author(s). Remarkably, Titor claimed to have time-travelled from 2036 on a mission to retrieve an IBM 5100 in 1975. Titor refrained from public appearances and any evidence for his story remains web-bound but before closing shop c. March 24^th 2001, he described various future events, e.g.:

Y2K is a disaster. Many people die on the highways when they freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather.

Cancellation of the Olympics after 2004 due to world conflict.

America will soon be engaged in civil war with itself; a civil war that we'll see the beginnings of during 2004 and 2005, escalating until it is indisputable by 2008.

(Y2K predictions diminished after 1^st Jan 2000. One wonders how America could suffer civil war other than with itself or do so disputably for three years. Titorists still found signs of civil war in 2008.) This equivocal civil war fizzles until global nuclear war kills three billion people in 2015. (On the plus side, hats are popular in 2036.)