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J udgement Day
The Times & Life of J ohn Titor

By Tim Ventura & Oliver Williams, March 20th, 2007

Appearing in the media like an apparition, the mysterious newsgroup poster John Titor told a
story of time-travel from a post-nuclear future that captivated the late-night airwaves and
inspired deep introspection into the role of materialism & conflict in todays world. We interview
the webmaster of johntitor.com for his perspectives on what Titor said - and what may come.

AAG: Let's start out with the J ohn Titor backstory -- in this case, it's a pretty expansive
tale, and I'm going to start out recommending that our audience visit your site online at
johntitor.com, but I'm wondering if you could quickly bring us up to speed with a brief
overview of the notable elements of this remarkable tale?

Oliver: Thanks for the link reference but don't take my word for any of this. A Google
search for images, blogs and even news will bring up thousands of sites with J ohn Titor
information. There's even a pay-per-click video now for the devoted.

In November of 2000, J ohn Titor started posting on a forum that he was a time traveler
from the year 2036 who had traveled to our time while completing a military mission. The
mission involved going back to the year 1975 and getting one of the first portable
computers manufactured by IBM. According to J ohn, the computer was unique and they
needed it in the future to decode or communicate with much older computer systems that
were effected by Y2K. Obviously, two questions come up. Why would someone with a time
machine need outdated technology? Isn't this fiction since Y2K didn't happen?

Two interesting points may answer the first question. J ohn gave very detailed information
about the computer he was after that was apparently only known by a handful of IBM
engineers. After reading J ohn's posts, an actual IBM engineer came forward and backed up
what J ohn had said. In addition, NASA scours eBay today looking for computer parts to
keep the space shuttle flying. The idea of needing outdated computers to keep expensive
systems running is with us now.


On the second subject of Y2K, J ohn said that time travel was actually the passing between
infinite universes and it was possible to choose the different times between them. J ohn
was surprised and disturbed by the fact Y2K didn't happen for us. I believe that may have
been the reason he was posting in the first place.

AAG: Now in terms of background, you're a lot like myself: you first heard about the
J ohn Titor story and treated it with a bit of skepticism, but like me the story haunted you

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enough that you created the official J ohn Titor website as a repository for all of the
information & related news pertaining to the story. Can you tell us about your initial
reactions to the Titor story -- how you first heard about it, your initial opinions, and how
they changed over time to lead you to create the website?

Oliver: J ohn posted online for a period of five months between November 2000 and
March 2001. He announced he was leaving, said good bye and left the Internet. I
discovered the posts later in 2001 when a friend sent me a few links. After staying up all
night reading, I was amazed and continued to follow the posts. One of the statements
J ohn made was that his time machine was powered by two mini-black holes that were
manufactured in a particle accelerator called CERN in Geneva Switzerland. He made the
statement in his posts that CERN would announce their expectations to create mini-black
holes in the fall of 2001. Amazingly, that's exactly what happened six months after he left.
That feeling of "oh my gosh" stuck with me. I think its the main reason people keep
following the posts.

As time went on, more and more of what J ohn said about our future began to unfold and
there were more "oh my gosh" moments. You would read the posts and forget them until
you saw something in the news that reminded you that a time traveler spoke about it a
year ago. That's what prompted me to collect the actual words J ohn wrote online and put
them into one spot that was easier to read.

AAG: The J ohn Titor story really does seem to haunt people, doesn't it? I've shown it to
a number of well-respected scientists, and while they tend to agree that his technical
description of the time-travel device is at least plausible, they all tend to dismiss the story
as either being a hoax, political-art, or just a publicity stunt by a physics student.
Nonetheless, many of them continue to follow the story regularly and chat about it with
their colleagues because the story haunts them. Have you seen similar reactions from
people that your acquaintances?

Oliver: The physics of the posts take more criticism than anything else. However, it is
interesting to see that J ohn Cramer, a professor of physics from Washington state, wrote
many things about mini black holes and alternate universes after J ohn wrote them that
could have been pulled right from the posts. In addition, professor Cramer is now looking
for funding to build a working time machine model based on real science. I also saw
recently that a patent has been taken out for a process based on J ohn's description of how
his time machine worked. Maybe there's good financial reasoning behind denying J ohn's
physics and debunking the posts?

Yes, the story is haunting. J ohn seemed like a real person who believed what he was
saying and it flew in the face of what we expect a time traveler to be. He was very polite
but harbored anger and resentment toward us for our political inaction and ignorance. He
was angered when people asked questions for their own personal gain but happy to
discuss future technology, philosophy, religion and self reliance. It's disturbing to read

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something you want to believe that has so many negative aspects to it. To stay sane, you
have to find a reason to discount it.

AAG: Now it seems that the best way to provide validation for the Titor story comes
from matching up historical facts with the original claims over a period of time. Titor
himself was vague about a lot of historical details, but nonetheless made a insinuations
about the future, and even a few outright predictions. Can you outline a few of them for
us, and tell us how they're holding up in the 5 years since this story first appeared?

Oliver: I'm not sure I agree that validation of time travel should be based on the
accuracy of future events. Imagine you have a time machine. At four in the afternoon,
you're standing on a street corner in the rain. Your friend drives past you and has a car
accident. You decide to use your time machine and go back twenty-four hours to warn
him. You call your friend and tell him it will rain tomorrow and that he'll have a car accident
at four. Predicting rain isn't seen as a big deal and your friend decides not to go driving
thus avoiding the accident. Now your prediction is false. Is that proof you didn't travel in
time? Aren't situations like this the reason we want a time machine?

As far as J ohn is concerned, yes, he did make a series of statements which could be
considered predictions. Some he was very right about while others are more questionable
or confusing. J ohn talked about not finding WMDs in Iraq before the war started, trouble
with the space shuttle, advances with viruses in treating cancer, the spread of Internet
based entertainment and wireless technology, the arrival and danger of mad cow disease
in the US, civil war in the United States, and many others.

AAG: Well before the presidential election in 2000, Titor had raised some questions
about how the public would feel if the results of the election were disputed. He also
insinuated that civil war would begin to erupt in 2005, and that a full-out shooting-war
would exist in the USA by 2008. Can you tell us about these civil unrest predictions, leading
up to his claim of nuclear war in 2015? Also, would it be fair to say that he gained a boost
in popularity after the disputed 2000 election?

Oliver: J ohn did strike a cord with people by discussing the election and civil war in the
United States but I don't think I'm able to get in J ohn's head and explain what we meant.
He may have been trying to warn us not to go driving at four o'clock. On the other hand, it
is interesting to note that J ohn's posts about civil war seem remarkably accurate when you
replace the words United States with Iraq.

AAG: On a personal note, I had a healthy skepticism about the Titor story until 2003,
when I was literally stunned to see an issue of Scientific American on the news-stand
talking about the new CERN particle-collider being able to generate charge-based micro-
singularities (black holes) when it goes online in 2007. Is the science all coming together
on-schedule to make Titor's prediction of a time-travel device plausible?


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Oliver: It does appear look that way or, as some have speculated, the person who
wrote the posts not only worked on the IBM computer in 1975 but also works at CERN. It
caught my attention a few weeks ago to see that an unknown "explosion" at CERN has set
them back a little. I wonder if the system is already working and creating mini black holes?

AAG: You mentioned some stunning new information to me on the phone: that Art Bell,
the host of Coast to Coast AM, had received two faxes from J ohn Titor in 1998 talking
about both the Twin Towers being destroyed in New York City as well as Newt Gingrich
running for president. Since Fox News was talking about Gingrich for President in 2008 on
today's news, I thought it would be a good time to ask a bit more about this stunning new
information. What can you tell us?

Oliver: When I first heard about the faxes, I didn't pay too much attention to it because
it wasn't part of the original posts he left in 2000 - 2001. Then I heard the audio with Art
and I do believe this was J ohn. Art read the faxes on the air. J ohn told Art he remembered
a New York in the future with a missing sky-scrapper as well as a future where Newt
Gingrich was president. I'm not sure how likely it is for Mr. Gingrich to be president but it
does sound like a cryptic warning about 911. It's also interesting to note that J ohn said he
had to go back to 1998 from 2001 before going home to 2036. So was the J ohn who sent
the faxes to Art the same J ohn we met or another J ohn on his way to 2000?

AAG: You'd mentioned to me earlier that the Titor story might not be as easy to validate
as we first might guess, since his claim of time-travel using the "Many Worlds"
interpretation of Quantum Mechanics means that the timeline he claims to originate in is
technically in a similar but parallel dimension to our own. This means that there are implicit
minor differences between his own historical reality and ours. As I recall, you'd mentioned
the 2004 Olympic Games as being one of these - can you tell us a bit more about these
differences?

Oliver: Yes, this is true. Many people point to the 2004 Olympics as proof J ohn was not
a time traveler. This is interesting considering J ohn said Y2K happened for him and not for
us in his very first posts. When you read what he said, he stated flatly that our future
would be different that the future he lived. Maybe some people need something they
consider definitive in order to disregard something else that frightens them.

AAG: Titor claimed that he was able to use a "gravity-lock" in his time-travel unit to
prevent massive timeline-divergence during travel - to keep him close to timelines at least
similar to his own, and prevent him from ending up someplace like a timeline where the
dinosaurs still existed. Here's the problem, though: none of the scientists that I've shown
his story to have the first clue about how this gravity-lock unit is supposed to work. Can
you tell us a bit about this gravity-lock device, and whether you've found any validation for
the idea from the scientific community?


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Oliver: My impression of the gravity-lock is something that measured changes in gravity
as his time machine was activated. The Earth would have been a major gravity source that
would have been easily picked up by the system. J ohn said the time machine could alter
the gravity field it was creating in order to "hold" the Earth in place. I have seen articles in
the past year or so describing gravity sensors scientists plan to use on satellites so the
technology does exist.

AAG: I've wondered if it's possible that the gravity-lock technology might have been a
hoax by the time-machine's designers to make people like Titor feel safe using the
machine? After all, once he leaves their timeline he's gone forever anyways -- they'd be
depending on some other Titor to show up with their IBM 5100, and with an infinite
number of universes, odds are another Titor eventually would. Any thoughts on this
possiblity?

Oliver: That's an interesting idea. I've always wondered if J ohn was a real time traveler
and also a liar.

AAG: Let's talk about the overall public response to the Titor story. As the webmaster for
the official online archive, you get the brunt of public feedback & opinion on this tale, and
you've mentioned having received death-threats and all sorts of negative public response
about this story. Can you tell us a bit about this?

Oliver: For some reason, the posts seem to really anger some people. Some are angry
because they believe the posts are corrupting people and making them believe in time
travel. Others are angry because they think time travel is real and we're not supposed to
know what J ohn was telling us. What ever the reason, I've been getting threats by email
ever since we started the site. Usually they're in all caps and telling me what they would do
if they ever found me but there have been others that were more serious and more
threatening.

AAG: Do you think that this negativity coming from the public might be a sort of dark
admission that we agree with his assessments about our future? In other words, could this
be an emotional reaction to the realization that the way we're running our society might
very well lead to the events he's predicted?

Oliver: I absolutely agree but J ohn also told us we don't have to surrender to a
predefined future.

AAG: Now one online skeptic - a fellow calling himself 'Mr. Dark' - claims that since civil
war didn't break out in 2005 the Titor story has been proven to be a hoax. However, didn't
Titor himself state that civil unrest would begin "as having a Waco type event every month
that steadily gets worse". Given the massive riots in France last winter, a rising insurgency

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in Iraq, and steadily increasing tensions along the Mexican border, is it fair to say that
maybe it's still too early to tell whether these events have begun?

Oliver: The statement about Waco has been another one of those issues people center
around as proving the posts false. I always thought "Waco" events referred to government
intervention on private citizens that caused the death of the citizens. Maybe we didn't really
understand what J ohn meant by that. I'm beginning to wonder if Waco events doesn't
mean the increasing frequency of children dying violently for pointless reasons.

AAG: In your opinion, what's the bellweather event that really tells us whether the Titor
story accurately predicts our future? Is it this notion of a real civil-war breaking out in
2008, having it engulf the entire USA by 2012, or his predicted nuclear attacks by 2015? In
your eyes, what's the point of no return telling us that we're following Titors predicted
timeline?

Oliver: That's an interesting question. In my opinion, we're already off the Titor time-
line but J ohn seemed more concerned about that than he did having a nuclear or civil war.
I think the real proof of J ohn's statements will be found in the technology. I'm watching
CERN very closely to see if mini black holes can really be captured the way J ohn said.

AAG: Thus far, we've talked a lot about timelines, events, and even technology, but I
should mention that the majority of the Titor story is actually about our culture, and not
only how it compares to what he claims exists in the United States of 2036, but also about
how they view our culture of today in a historical sense. Some people have described his
views as "libertarian", but to most of us his opinions seem both vaguely familiar and yet
completely alien. What are your thoughts on the cultural differences that he describes
between these two worlds?

Oliver: It's true. Many people have tried to categorize J ohn's political views so they
could create a profile on what kind of person they think typed the posts. In my opinion, it's
very difficult to do that considering the wide range of views he had. His descriptions of
society seemed a lot like communisism at the same time he was chastising us for our lack
of religion. I think it's very possible that catastrophic events in the future could create a
society with people like J ohn. I also think that's another element that makes the posts so
haunting.

AAG: You know, most time-travel claims talk about future catastrophes and offer advice
on how to avoid them, but a large part of Titor's story seems to involve the notion that the
only way his world can be born is for ours to die. In a sense, it almost creates a wall
between our two worlds - an invisible barrier of catastrophe that changes our culture into
something that we simply can't imagine today. Titor talked about the people of the future
not really liking our culture today. Can you elaborate a bit on that?


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Oliver: As a time traveler, J ohn was probably in a unique situation he was unprepared
for. Imagine being able to travel back in time and seeing the everyday activities of the
German people as the Nazi's were taking over or getting to know someone who was about
to board the Titanic. J ohn seemed angry, paranoid, concerned and frustrated about the
questions he was asked and the world he found in the year 2000. He even said outright
that he blamed us for many of the terrible things he was forced to deal with as an adult.

AAG: Now your role as the Titor webmaster really involves archiving the original Titor
story, but in the past couple of years others have begun adding to the original story itself --
mostly notably a group claiming to be Titor's family in our timeline, who appear in the
media through their attorney, Larry Haber. What can you tell us about this recent twist to
the story? Have they added any notable new information or pictures, and more
importantly, have they made any contradictions to the original story that might cast doubt
on their authenticity?

Oliver: Larry Haber is a real attorney who lives in Florida and claims to represent the
family of J ohn Titor in the year 2007. According to Larry, the family moved to the Midwest,
wrote a book for sale on Amazon, and deals with Larry on other media development. The
family remains hidden due to the fact that young J ohn in our time is only nine years old.
The mother of J ohn Titor released a document a few years ago that is supposed to prove
J ohn had something to do with changing the IBM computer in 1975. I also believe they
were able to prove who they were to a group of people that spoke to J ohn online and had
information backing up their claims. There is a short film from Larry's office for sale that
can be downloaded from the Internet. It is interesting and adds a twist to everything else
going on.

AAG: Speaking of the Titor family, one of J ohn's final postings talked about having them
film his departure from the year 2001 to provide a bit more evidence for the authenticity of
his story. If nothing else, it would be neat to see the time-travel device at work -- have you
heard whether they were able to capture his departure on film, and if so, do they have
plans to release it?

Oliver: J ohn stated he would allow his departure to be videotaped and put up on the
Internet. Larry Haber claims to know nothing about it. Either the video was not made or
never uploaded. The video up now is not of J ohn's departure.

AAG: I've heard rumblings about a movie deal in the works to produce a feature-film on
the J ohn Titor story. Are either you or the Titor family involved with his, and have you
heard any details about it?

Oliver: I've heard the same thing but I don't have anymore information. I've had some
success at contacting the actor who plays J ohn Titor in the short film. His name is Michael
Hartson. He's a real actor in Hollywood who's been in real movies. I hope to ask him a few
questions in the next few weeks.

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AAG: Let's close with a question about your own future --how do you see your role as
webmaster of the J ohn Titor website progressing over time? Will there ever be a time when
you shut the website down, or will it remain online indefinitely as a morality tale about the
times we live in? Also, what are your own future plans over the course of the next few
years?

Oliver: I'll keep the site up as long as I can. J ust when you think the posts don't have
any life in them, something happens in the news that sparks the whole thing all over again.
I've always wondered if J ohn was a real time traveler but told us just enough to manipulate
us. Maybe J ohn knew someone like me would do exactly what I'm doing. On the other
hand, what if J ohn knew there would be no war in our future and wanted to change that?
If he gave out just enough information, someone might be able to build a bomb with a
mini black hole.

Oliver is the archival webmaster of the official J ohn Titor website a collection of postings, links, and
information reference by Titor during the 2000 2001 timeframe. While Oliver prefers to remain semi-
anonymous, you may contact him via email at J TEditor@johntitor.com.