Apocalypse NOW?

The economic news in the U.S. of late has had me glued to my chair. I knew this was coming, I just didn't know exactly when. A few years ago I started to have a bad feeling about the economy, and decided to cash out part of my retirement savings to pay off land that my husband and I purchased on which to retire. I had to pay penalties and interest for early withdrawal, but I figured that the peace of mind I would have knowing the land was paid for was worth it.

Then a few years went by and I started to wonder what I had been worried about after all. My husband and I had secure jobs with steady incomes. We qualified to buy a house, put down a good down payment, and managed to find renters. Our friends thought we were nuts to have cashed out our savings early. Now this.

Some might look at what is happening now and think it is the Biblical Apocalypse that is predicted in Revelations. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't - I don't claim to be a Biblical scholar. However, a phrase that I read on a website about three years ago has haunted me. It was supposedly written by a man from the future - specifically the year 2036 - and he said "yours was the generation that had it all and threw it all away."

The man was named John Titor and he made his appearance on the Internet from November 2000 to March 2001. Many people have called his posts a hoax, but there is something eerie about the things he said and predicted that leave a marked impression. "Titor" (the name is widely believed to be a pseudonym - perhaps a contraction of time traveler) posted at several forums, where he made predictions based on the state of the world in his time.

One of the remarks that he made concerned a scientific discovery at CERN, in Switzerland, which would make time travel possible. At the time that I read his posts, I had never heard of CERN. Imagine my surprise to read on September 10, 2008 that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator at CERN had completed its first major test to create a Higgs boson - the "God particle". Scientists claim that successful iterations of this test will result in the creation of a mini-black hole.

Titor also claimed that a civil war would eventually erupt within the United States between those who support the U.S. government and those who don't. Although his timetables were off - he said the war would begin around 2004 - he claimed that the trigger for the war at that time would be "an election that was "stolen". He also stated that the theory of parallel universes was correct and that his time-line was several degrees off from ours.

Titor added that the civil conflict would begin gradually with the government removing Constitutional rights from American citizen, then escalating to a police state. I find this particularly interesting in light of subsequent developments like the Patriot Act and the executive branch spying on Americans without first obtaining wiretap warrants. He also predicted individuals being arrested and held without due process - a precursor to our prisons in Guantanamo and the loss of the right of Habeas Corpus. Titor also predicted that epidemic illnesses would lay waste to future populations and specifically mentioned Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD) - more popularly known as Mad Cow Disease. Eventually, a nuclear war would result in death and the radiation of food and water, making it difficult even for those who were not in the areas attacked to survive.

In one post, John Titor said that the year 2008 is when everyone will begin to realize that "the world they thought they were living in was over". His posts may or may not have been a hoax, but I think the advice that he gave was good for all of us to follow: invest in alternative energies - specifically hydrogen fuel cells, buy a bicycle and spare tires and practice using them, learn first aid and CPR, learn how to use a gun, and work to change the direction of the future.

I, for one, plan to do all these things and I am working for peace.