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word.

hey - what's everyone's opinion on john titor? if you don't know, check out www.johntitor.com and read some. there's alot there, but the deal is this guy started posting on the net in '00 that said he was a time traveler, blah blah, left a bunch of cryptic messages and predictions.

as you can prolly tell already from my tone, i don't really believe it. i think its one of the best reads i've had all year, but moving right along... my wife is a big conspiracy theorist. well she comes home yesterday rattling on about they new theory: that all these government officials are resigning because they know of some major terrorist attack that will happen in 2005. and it's supposed to be some kind of electrical attack, which will knock out power everywhere. no lights + no computers = choas.

well, she goes on to relate it to the titor character, how he predicted that the us will roll itself into a civil war in '05. so i just am curious what everyone else thinks of these kind of stories. i think they're great fiction and a great way for non-artistic people to strech their creative muscles. but if anyone really believes the stuff, then that's also cool too. i married someone like that, so i'm obviously down to a certain degree.


josh

i know a girl who believes that within the next decade, the US will come to a point in time where it is the norm to have an id chip implanted in you (and possibly required for things like banking and healthcare) and anyone who doesn't do it will be considered subversive. and i thought *I* was a conspiracy theorist!

i've read that guy's site before (i think someone actually linked to it here months ago). it's funny. it doesn't make a whole ton of sense to me, and such is not a good conspiracy. but as far as conspiracies go, i think it's safe to say there will be another major terrorist attack on US soil in the not-too-distant future. i mean, if all the intel and security folks are preaching "it's not if, but *when*", that seems like it's almost a lock. then there's the whole thing where it's beyond easy to commit a suicide bombing, and there haven't been any on US soil yet, or at least none that have made major headlines. something is fishy. if there really are terrorists out to get us, why hasn't one of them strapped on a backpack full of explosives and boarded a train in a major metro area? either a) there are no terrorists b) there are but they suck at doing their job, or c) they're so good at it that they're not wasting their time with piddly shit like blowing up a hundred people or two in a train car in DC rush hour, which would have a really, *really* dramatic effect in so many ways; like they're going for something bigger.

taking out the entire US power system would be, i think, way too difficult to pull off. you're talking about a very coordinated attack in multiple locations across the country on some very-not-soft targets. nuclear power plants are probably rather protected. they'd do better to try for something like a bio or chem attack on the NY subway. that'd probably be, all things considered, pretty easy to pull off. taking out the power grids all across the country is probably not so easy at all.

now here's something interesting, something i was trying to think through back in '99... an EMP. how hard is it to create an EMP (yeah, yeah, just like in the Matrix)?? a nuclear explosion would do it, but that's not necessarily easy to pull off. can a device be built that would create an EMP that would destroy all semiconductors within a one-mile radius? could it be made small enough to fit in a van? if so, driving that van into, say, the Wall Street area and then setting it off... that would pretty much destroy the US economy, wouldn't it? no computers on Wall Street until they could all be replaced? at what cost? and what about all the lighting and security and fire systems for all the buildings? how many hundreds of millions would that cost? what about the effect on the stock market, it being down for however long? not to mention when it started back up, everybody'd be freaking out and tanking everything...

that's the thing, i can get so down thinking about this stuff, because it's so easy to come up with all kinda scenarios that would fuck the US up so bad... and i don't even want to see it happen! what about the bad guys, who sit and think about this shit all day every day? i can't even imagine what they've come up with! maybe that's why i can't sleep so good.

yeah, that guy's a kook though. they can build a time machine, but they can't get together enough brains to design and build one of those portable computers on their own? eesh. that story woulda been cooler if they had to travel back in time to get a '67 les paul in mint condition or something.

I heard great episode of Coast to Coast AM with George Noory about John Titor one night when driving back to Chicago from Nebraska. I got real into it, mostly because they said the Capitol of the United States was going to be moved to Omaha after the civil war.It was 2AM and I was strung out on Coffee so that could have something to do with my excitement. Paranoid internet mythology is great, one few sources of folk stories still kicking in the world. [/i]

bellulah wrote:no lights + no computers = choas

Are "choas" in any way related to C.H.U.D.? If so, I'm scared.

I think Josh meant "choads," Bradley.

what scares you more, choads or C.H.U.D.?

bellulah wrote:what scares you more, choads or C.H.U.D.?

choads didn't have a scary, scary movie made about 'em!!! definitely C.H.U.D.!

(to top all the craziness i almost let "chaods" slip through...wouldn't that have been wild!)

toomanyhelicopters wrote:i know a girl who believes that within the next decade, the US will come to a point in time where it is the norm to have an id chip implanted in you (and possibly required for things like banking and healthcare) and anyone who doesn't do it will be considered subversive. and i thought *I* was a conspiracy theorist!

I don't know about within the next decade, I doubt it, but there is a lot of evidence that points to something like this becoming a reality at some point...

I mean, just from a two second CNN.com search alone:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/10/20/expl ... index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06 ... index.html

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/euro ... /index.htm

lhttp://archives.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/05 ... index.html

(Shit, those last two links aren't working...search: Implanted computer chips if you're interested.)

Still though, I think that most people (or at least a very vocal minority) would never go for it. Hopefully anyway, sheesh!

I can't believe I'd never heard of this until this thread. This guy, whoever he (she?) is, is really fun to read. He's obviously thought a lot about his story. It reminds me of the last William Gibson novel. Speaking of books, a lot of Titor's description of the "future" seems very Bruce Sterling-like: the strong, de-centered communities, etc. People say he's also borrowing heavily from "Alas, Babylon," which I read as a kid but barely remember.