Who claimed to be from the future. The case is funny, but far from isolated. Moreover, many of these "time travelers" were not arrested and not dragged to a psychiatric hospital, but they listened to them and believed almost every word. However, without curiosities and frank hoaxes also could not do. We decided to recall some high-profile and amazing cases related to chrononauts.
Soldier from 2036
John Titor
Perhaps the most famous "time traveler", which caused an extraordinary stir, forcing even convinced skeptics to think about his words. Nobody has ever seen Titor himself - John preferred to communicate on the Internet. According to legend, Titor arrived from the year 2036, when the world lay in ruins after the invasion of a computer virus, the Third World War and a whole string of local conflicts. Titor's future looks like it's in cyberpunk novels of the mid-1980s and early 1990s: high digital technologies coexist with poverty and decline in other areas, half the world is destroyed by nuclear strikes, and the political map is completely different from the current one.
Schematic of John Titor's time machine
Titor preferred to speak in semi-hints, without naming specific dates and names, referring to "non-intervention" in the affairs of the past. Nevertheless, “non-intervention” did not work, and he poured out a lot of information on his grateful readers: in addition to fairly transparent hints, he, for example, explained in detail the structure of the time machine and the principle of time travel.
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 rather 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 lead to a new civil war and split the country into several separate states. But it was on this ridge that the whole 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 typical for the world in which he lives: time travel, according to Titor, involves moving from one parallel reality of the multiverse to another.
Mission Titor was to go back to 1975 and get hold of the IBM 5100 computer, which had a latent capability to fix "old UNIX-based systems, even before the spread of APL and Basic." In 2000, when his first posts on the Time Travel Institute forum appeared, John stopped by “for personal reasons”: to see his family and ... himself at the age of two. Doc Brown is crying tears of blood.
Hokan Nordqvist and Hokan 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 his tools and reached into the cupboard under the sink to fix the leak. Further, according to Hokan, the space of the closet suddenly expanded, and a 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, says Nordqvist, he managed not only to meet with his 72-year-old self, but also to shoot a video confirmation. It is difficult to judge the similarity of the people captured by him: Nordqvist took a strategically correct position with his back to the sun. However, there are some similarities between men, except that an elderly person is slightly taller than Nordqvist, and in the period from 36 to 72 years, people usually do not grow. There is one more "evidence" - identical tattoos, but it is rather 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 travel to the past, where he took several photographs. True, his most famous photo, which depicted a pterodactyl, turned out to be a highly out-of-focus shot of an illustration from the book “Life before Man”, and a photo with alien dancers turned out to be a screenshot of a TV screen on which the Dean Martin show was on. Subsequently, the wife of the Swiss confirmed that all the evidence of his words were forgeries and she personally took part in their manufacture.
Future Millionaire Andrew Karlssin
In 2002, the FBI carried out an operation to detain 44-year-old Andrew Karlsin, who was surprisingly lucky in stock transactions. The agents suspected that Karlsin had entered into a criminal conspiracy with the managers of stock trading companies, and with the help of insider information received from them, he received quite good income.
Having started playing with 800 dollars in his pocket, Andrew managed to increase his fortune to 350 million in two weeks, having completed 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 collusion with representatives of the companies, instead declaring that he had come from the future - from the year 2256, where, of course, everything is known about how stock quotes fluctuated in 2002.
As soon as the story got into the newspapers, a whole hysteria began around the story of Karlsin. Someone claimed that such a person never existed before 2002, there is no mention of him in the databases. Stock brokers assured 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 a time traveler appeared on the pages of Weekly World News, a tabloid famous for the most absurd stuffing and fiction.
Chronovisor of the Holy Father Pellegrino Ernetti
Benedictine monk, archaic music specialist, 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 to have come from the future or the past, and it is rather difficult to call what he described a journey. Ernetti claimed to have invented a kind of device - a chronovisor - that allowed him to look at any point in time and see the events that took place there.
As Ernetti himself said, he was inspired to create such an instrument by a passion for ancient music, or rather, for the ancient Roman opera Fiesta, the score of which was lost, but the original sound of which the holy father passionately desired to hear.
Interestingly, 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 Brun, 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 same Word, which, according to the Bible, was at the beginning of everything. By learning to read these waves, it was possible to call from the past any event that ever happened. The result of the work of the chronovisor, according to Brun, looked like a three-dimensional black-and-white hologram, but taking into account new technologies, color could also be added.
In order to check the operation of the device and make sure of its accuracy, the holy fathers first looked into the recent past by watching a speech by Benito Mussolini. Then we went further, seeing Napoleon, Cicero's speech and, in the end, the crucifixion of Christ.
Shortly thereafter, 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. In addition, Brune argues, the chronovisor could be set to capture the thoughts of any person, and in unscrupulous hands this would lead to the establishment of a worldwide dictatorship.
Nevertheless, no convincing evidence of the existence of the chronovisor has been presented to the general public. The text of the "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 woodcarver Lorenzo Valera, and the very principle of operation of the device, which allows both to see the events of the past on TV was described in the work of science fiction writer Thomas Sherred "Attempt" in 1947.
Marcello Pellegrino Ernetti
Photograph of Jesus Christ
The name of John Titor (John Titor) first appeared on the Time Travel Institute forum in November 2000, however, it was then that he signed TimeTravel_0, and soon he gave his "name" - John Titor. He told about himself that he is a soldier from the future, from 2036, and in his time our world has already been destroyed by some kind of computer virus. So, the mission of the time traveler 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, asked him questions about the near future, and Titor answered willingly, not forgetting to remind that reality is not one for all, and his reality does not necessarily coincide with others. Be that as it may, he simply aroused great interest in his person, and his predictions for the near future enjoyed great interest and were discussed in the widest possible way.
So, in particular, he predicted the war in Iraq, although very vaguely. However, some of the predictions did not come true at all. So, 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 along the way, deciding to call in at that time for personal reasons - to see his family, to collect some photographs. In fact, his ultimate goal is 1975.
So, among John Titor's predictions were a US civil war, a nuclear attack, a war in Iraq, the transfer of the US capital to Nebraska, and even a vague allusion to World War III.
Several times, Titor described the time machine in great detail, actively operating on 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.
Later, several private investigations were undertaken, during which no information about a man named John Titor was found out. There was no evidence of his family, and only one person, lawyer Larry Haber (Larry Haber), confirmed his possible existence.
Best of the day
Today, everything related to John Titor, a time traveler and a soldier from the future, is usually mentioned with a grain of salt. But more than ten years ago, many people, carried away by the topic of the future, extraterrestrial civilizations and other things, reacted to it with the most lively interest. John Titor has remained as much of a legend on the internet as it has remained unsolved. Many call him a hoaxer and even a charlatan, others respect the brilliant idea of this, of course, an interesting person with an 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 is said to have come from the future and made a stop in the year 2000 to post a few posts on the forums. This, my friends, is the beginning and the end of the story. However, we are skeptical and would like to know more. Something can be learned from rumors and legends, even in the complete absence of connection with history. The very existence 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 the time traveler John Titor.
The first acquaintance with the general public, in 1998, John Titor owes several messages on the radio "From Coast to Coast", which broadcast programs about paranormal phenomena. Posing as a time traveler from the year 2036, he warned of a global computer system failure at midnight on December 31, 1999, which would cause famine, frost and military conflict. The next time John Titor appeared was in 2000, on a forum called The Time Travel Institute. His nickname was TimeTravel_0. Under the same name, on the forum "From coast to coast", a prediction was posted about the beginning of the civil war in the United States in 2004, which would break the country into 5 regions and result in the Third World War, continuing until 2015. Among the predictions of John Titor is the Large Hadron Collider, built by that time. So the time traveler's prediction was that the LHC would give rise to small black holes. All, without exception, the predictions of John Titor did not come true.
According to John Titor, he arrived 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 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, in the course of moving through the years, he decided to stop for a few years in 1998. John Titor made his movements in a car with a built-in time machine. It should be noted that this way of traveling is not new, the film "Back to the Future" in 1985 is well known to the public. It cannot be ruled out that the prankster chose this old-fashioned way of time travel, wanting to prank the forum visitors.
Since John Titor remained active on the forum even after the arrival of the year 2000, which showed the price 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. An unverifiable force majeure claim grants immunity to all time traveler claims.
Now the skeptic can discover the reason why John Titor became famous in Internet forums. Anyone can easily register and tell whatever they want. You can pretend to be Mickey Mouse, Napoleon or a time traveler from the future. People also sometimes seize the initiative, and there is no guarantee that only one person writes on behalf of John Titor. Likewise, there is no guarantee that calls and faxes on the radio are not sent by stupid pranksters. This happens several times a day.
John Titor differs from anonymous posts in his predictions of the future, which are easily verifiable over time. All predictions turned out to be fake, that is, exactly what you would expect from a random talker.
Why did the story of John Titor become famous? Why does it exist?
The Joker has managed to gain notoriety as a time traveler thanks to the development of the Internet and the Coast to Coast radio station, which is very friendly to such fictions and unverified facts. Nowadays, the density of information on the Internet is much higher, and there are more “time travelers” and other pranksters. Now it's much harder to get John Titor's fame.
At the same time, note that popular stories on the Internet appear almost daily. Breaking through to the top today is much more difficult than back in 1998, but inventions that won 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 became popular.
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 it. 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 connection between conspiracy theorists and Internet forum users. Therefore, John Titor represents many of the popular opinions.
To top it off, he has a time machine built into a sports car. Who wouldn't like this?
According to the author, connoisseurs of interesting stories should not like the time traveler John Titor. The author was asked many questions about this traveler, which forced him to study the materials. Surprise knew no bounds when it turned out how insignificant the information was. Some people believe in John Titor. The majority, who are familiar with Internet pranks, simply scoff at the time traveler. Reflecting on whether the story deserves the article, the author was not worried about its veracity. It would be more interesting to understand how we determine whether a paranormal activity is worth attention.
Strictly speaking, nothing should be rejected without close scrutiny. On the other hand, we are busy people and there is no time for a detailed examination of everything that surrounds us. A line should be drawn between the worthy and the unworthy. The author believes that the story of John Titor's time travel is beyond an imaginary line.
One of the pleasures of exploration is discovery. If someone posts stupid messages on the forums, maintaining them for years, it does not add value and veracity to the posted information. There is no room for discovery here, unlike many other legends that grew up on real events.
Enthusiasts of John Titor tried to come from the other side. In 2008, Italian TV planned a show looking for the real John Titor, the one who goes by that name. Very quickly they realized that it would be a boring show and switched to another topic.
The author avoids this path and, when choosing a topic, recommends rejecting stories beyond common sense, when, by all indications, we are dealing with a fantasy or a hoax. There are so many interesting and interesting things around us. Time travel? Jon Titor joke? Don't waste your time.
Translation Vladimir Maksimenko 2014
I want to believe
Why don't chrono-tourists 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 this happens - a kind of protective mechanism of the Universe to prevent the occurrence of unresolvable time paradoxes. Others argue that traveling to the past is impossible: whatever happened, happened The river of time flows in only one direction - to the future. The most pragmatic people generally consider time travel to be a fairy tale like Star Wars, the American moon landings and other gremlins. However, if we do not see chrono-tourists, this does not mean that they are not there.
One of the most famous time travelers was named John Titor. He wasn't a time traveler, he was a soldier from the future, just like Kyle Reese from The Terminator. Titor traveled from the year 2036 to modern times to find an IBM 5100 computer running a unique code that could solve Problem 2038 for UNIX systems. In addition, in 2015, World War III will break out, destroying about 3 billion people, the United States will fall into five parts, and the world will cease to exist in the form in which we know it.
History of John Titor
Even after so many years, there is still debate about exactly when this story began. The starting point was November 2, 2000, when someone named TimeTravel_0 started 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 Coast to Coast AM, a paranormal broadcast that aired in the US and Canada. Gradually, John Titor begins to give predictions of the future. More and more people joined the discussion, asking questions about time travel, asking why he was here, interested in the technologies necessary to create a time machine and, of course, full of wars and disasters in the coming events. 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, there are 7 other time travelers in his unit who perform various missions from the 60s to the 80s.
- Titor couldn't connect from 2001 to his home timeline in 2036
- Titor's true passion is sailing
Emblem of John Titor's unit
Time Travel Theory by John Titor
Titor argued that the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) theory, formulated by the American physicist Hugh Everett in 1957, is correct. According to his conclusions, each event has an infinite number of versions, determined by the most complex world function that can describe the universe in an infinite number of ways, at the same time, uncertainty (remember both a living and a dead cat in a box?) does not arise, since it is impossible to observe the universe being outside its limits. . Do not confuse the MMI with the Multiverse, which consists of an aggregate 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 on the basis of 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 the birth of Titor and the paradox will not arise.
Time Machine
Blueprints and diagrams of John Titor's time machine can be viewed and if desired, build your own copy to travel back to the future.
Let's skip the technical details and dwell on the feelings of a time traveler, which Titor talked about in some detail in his posts.
After the coordinates are loaded into the system, the time machine starts accelerating. A beep and a flashing light start the countdown, you must make sure that you are securely fastened in your chair. You almost immediately find yourself inside a machine-generated gravitational field. It's like a jerk if you were to go up the elevator quickly. When the car accelerates to 100%, the force of attraction 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 sending it to the past.
You will not see any flashes and bright lights, from the outside it will look like light rays are bending around the car. Your eyes should be protected by dark goggles as there will be a flash of intense ultraviolet radiation.
Titor describes what follows as "it's like driving under a rainbow, and then darkness comes to the very end." Then you hear a sound characteristic of a voltage drop and a slight crackle of static electricity.
Details of some predictions
All posts by the self-proclaimed time traveler were written before the events of 9/11, the crash of the shuttle Columbia, and the outbreak of the Second Iraq War. Many followers of Titor believe that he knew about these events, but did not speak about them directly, only throwing clues and giving hints. John Titor answered a huge number of questions and is believed to have foreseen many events that actually happened later. The most important thing in his predictions was that he proclaimed the truth of MMI with an infinite number of different options for the development of the same event, where, under the influence of our actions, the universe can “pass” 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 stays here, the greater the differences become.
Some predictions by John Titor and answers to questions about 2036:
- AIDS is still not defeated, there is progress in the treatment of cancer.
- Status: unknown
- In the course of experiments in the field of high energy physics, CERN will discover “strange things”.
- Status: the hysteria around the collider has died down a bit, the “God Particle” has been found
- Printed books are still being published.
- Status: unknown
- “Movie” 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.
- In 2012 there will be some natural disasters. There will be no end of the world.
- Status: correct. "Sandy" passed, Europe was abnormally covered with snow, Venice and the Krasnodar Territory were flooded, but the world survived.
- The US capital will be moved to Omaha, Nebraska.
- Status: unknown
- There will be no Olympic Games after 2004
- 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.
- Problem 2000 (Y2K) was a terrible disaster that resulted in a massive power outage and thousands of people froze to death on America's freeways 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 help but know this. Some sources claim that this story began in 1998 when Arthur Bell received two faxes from John Titor. Full text of messages and .
Adherents of Titor explain this inconsistency by the fact that the future has been 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 if 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 is further proof of Bell's rich imagination.
Influence on pop culture
The legend of John Titor most clearly manifested itself in the Steins;Gate series of games, manga and anime, in which John Titor is a soldier from the future who arrived in 2010 to find an IBN 5100 computer running on a unique program code that can decrypt SERN databases, an organization that in the future built a time machine and with its help gained world domination.
Hoaxes and legends have left their mark on popular culture before and have contributed to the development of unexpected tourist destinations in Scotland at Loch Ness and Roswell, New Mexico. However, the story of John Titor was a unique example of how the ordinary Internet discussion got out of the awkward Internet version 1.0 into the real world and merged into pop culture. Titor has appeared in media, a book, a play, a manga, a visual novel, an anime, and even patented some of his time travel theory. Legends are now born on the Web, just as Gibson and Sterling predicted.
In late 2000, a man calling himself John Titor began posting predictions for the near future on the Internet. John Titor claimed to have come from... from the year 2036. It is still not known whether this was a regular prank, or whether aliens from the future can actually come into contact with us. However, this is not the only case...
Titor has posted on various websites and forums. Sometimes he took on the pseudonym TimeTravel0. The prophecies made by this mysterious person look rather gloomy. This man spoke of a civil war breaking out in the United States that would split the country into five regions with Omaha as its capital. In 2015, we will face the Third World War, which will kill 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 capture the IBM 5100 computer from there, which should contain programs to combat the future virus. In that case, how did Titor end up in the year 2000? He really wanted to meet himself at the age of three, he explained. That's how old he was that year. Whether this venture succeeded is not known. As you know, the theory of time travel denies the possibility of meeting with a loved one from the past ...
Many, of course, reacted to Titor's posts with skepticism. But there were those who were interested in his information. For four months, Titor answered in great detail all the questions that the curious 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 connected with ours, that is, the future in which he lives may not be related to our past and present.
However, he urged to be prepared for a negative turn of events - in particular, to learn how to provide first aid and not eat beef, since in his reality such a disease as mad cow disease has become a serious threat to humanity.
Titor also talked about some of the technical aspects of time travel and even posted photos of the device on which he allegedly arrived in the past on the Web, however, the pictures were not of very high quality. The last time Titor went online on March 24, 2001, he gave his admirers advice in case of the end of the world: "Take a can of gasoline with you when you leave your car on the side of the road."
After that, he closed all his accounts, and no one has heard from him again until today. "The story of John Titor is popular because some of these stories just get popular," says Brian Denning, a writer and producer who specifically investigated 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 Titor's puzzle," writes Temporal Recon, "is the possibility that time travel might be true." Recently, information has appeared about various paranormal phenomena associated with the Internet. So, a few years ago, computer scientists drew attention to the ominous "black banner", which from time to time appears on one or another network page. "Clicking" on it does not lead anywhere, and after a while it disappears by itself.
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. So, physicist Michael Dodgenson from NASA reports: "When analyzing DNS servers, 102 links were found leading to non-existent resources, in other words," 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.
