On November 2, 2000, a man using the handle “TimeTravel_0” posted on an internet message board claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036. He said his name was John Titor, and he wrote about the dystopian future from which he came; a time of war, famine, and destruction.
He warned that his future was also our future, suggesting we prepare by stockpiling weapons and food. He also explained how his time machine works, offering up diagrams of the device. The year is 2036. Sixteen years after a surprise nuclear strike by the Russians in 2015, the United States infrastructure has collapsed. Factions of survivors have attempted to rehabilitate the country, struggling to make their lives in a place that now resembles a modern version of the Old West. In John’s future, time travel is a reality. The technology was developed at CERN in Switzerland years earlier and is mainly used for military purposes. This led to the formation of the 177th Temporal Reconnaissance Unit, of which John eventually becomes a member.
He is assigned his first mission: travel back in time to the year 1975 to recover the world’s first portable computer; the IBM 5100. This particular model features a hidden quirk; an ability to “speak” multiple code languages, one of which was useful to those attempting to rebuild the US infrastructure in 2036. The reason John was chosen for this mission was a personal one; his grandfather was the lead engineer of the small team responsible for building the IBM 5100.
With some help from his grandfather, John completes his mission and successfully retrieves the computer. On his way back to the future, he decides to stop over in the year 2000 to visit his mother, Kay Titor, and retrieve some personal artifacts and warn his family of the wars to come. It’s in this time that John reached out via the internet and began to tell his story. For most, the fact that there was no nuclear strike by the Russians in 2015 or a second American civil war suggests that John’s story was not real. For true believers, the fact that his vision of the future did not come to pass simply suggests that John’s presence in our timeline altered our future, stopping or delaying the inevitable nuclear war. From the moment John made his first public post, an eclectic group of characters have been slowly pulled into his story, becoming part of a complex and unusual mystery that for some might seem trivial. But to those who follow the word of John Titor, these interactions are proof that time travel is real and that our future is in jeopardy. Now, 20 years after his initial posts, John Titor’s story is even more relevant. With reports of Russian interference in the American presidential election and tensions rising under Donald Trump’s White House, John’s predictions of a second civil war and a surprise nuclear strike are being reconsidered by those who follow him.
JOHN TITOR: TIME TRAVELER is a feature length documentary film exploring unbelievable story of John Titor, which to this day remains to be one of the internet’s biggest unsolved mysteries. If John was real, what does that mean for the future? Is nuclear war imminent, or can we somehow change our destiny using the information John left behind? Do the blueprints of his time machine offer any insight into the technology needed to travel through time? Pamela Moore has been awaiting John’s return. What kind of information did he share with her? What does she know about John and our future that we don’t? If John isn’t real, who authored the hoax and for what reason? Many point to Larry Haber, but his motives remain unclear. Through in-depth interviews with the real people involved, we will attempt to answer some of these questions.
