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Things to Come?
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 24th 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 1st 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.)
Q&A with Titor yielded more stonewalling than information, e.g.:
Q: Who won the Super Bowl in 2001?
A: I do not answer questions like this. Although I don't really know the motivation for the question. I can guess. If a time traveler had knowledge of your future, and you could only ask one question, would this be it? Besides, can you tell me if it rained in New York on June 4th 1932? [Original punctuation]
Anyone from 2010 landing in 1931 may well not know the weather for June 4th 1932. However, inability to answer all questions neither explains nor excuses attacking questioners' motivations. Stonewalling also sits ill with Titor's earlier predictions.
Titor was no great prognosticator, but more famous seers had similar strike-rates. Consult any 'Nostradamus' volume printed some years ago and you'll find its predictions for the recent past are wrong. (An example: in 1980, I read Nostradamus predicted war in 1999 between China and a Soviet-American alliance.) You'll also find no Nostradamus predictions of (e.g.)...