July 31, 2024 • 23 mins
The internet is a vast archive of unsolved mysteries. By this week's campfire, Edwin investigates the Cicada 3301 puzzle, and Michelle tells us about the time traveler known as "John Titor".
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Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Scary Mystery Surprise (Campfire Story) is no longer being updated, but be sure to check out our other shows from Scary.fm for more scares!
Do you have an idea for an episode theme? email us: hello@campfirestory.com
Get ad-free episodes and support the show at CampfireStory.com
Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Scary Mystery Surprise (Campfire Story) is no longer being updated, but be sure to check out our other shows from Scary.fm for more scares!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Whoever reached the end would be in communication with Cicada
via email. Some of these clues even led people to
the dark Web. Get ready for a campfire story.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle, and we'll share spooky stories with
playful banter that'll keep you up at night.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
So throw some wood on the fire and put a
wiener on a stick. We're telling you a campfire story tonight.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Once again. Here we are in the woods. Everybody, Yes,
here we are.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Today's topic, our theme, if you will, for our adventure
today will.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Be Internet mysteries to dum. I think I've said it before.
I find internet stuff, early internet stuff very creepy, just
because it was kind of like the Wild West. A
lot of kids have no idea what it was like. Anyway,
this one takes place in twenty twelve, when the world
(01:06):
was supposed to end the first time or the second time,
because the first one was hy two k that I remember.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
That's funny because that comes up in my story too.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
But what yeah whoa Okay, So it was January fourth,
twenty twelve, and people are posting in these forums and
all these very smart people are typing up apps and
they're like just kind of updating everybody. Here's what I
had made, here's another thing did. And suppose you're scrolling
through all this stuff and all of a sudden you
(01:34):
see this post. Hello, we are looking for highly intelligent individuals.
To find them, we have devised a test. There is
a message hidden in this image. Find it and it
will lead you on the road to us. We look
forward to meeting the few that will make it all
the way through. Good luck three three zero one. If
(01:57):
you go back to the original post on the screen,
there's the traditional view of a forum, which back then
was way simpler than what it is now. It's not
quite Reddit, but it's still the same style. The challenge
was to decipher and decrypt this message in order to
obtain another clue. Well, the image was that of a cicada,
and a cicada is like, this is a bug. It's
(02:18):
supposed to come out of the ground every seventeen years
in swarms.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I think a lot of people find cicadas annoying.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I think they had a huge cicada year this year.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, well it sounds cool and it actually kind of
had to go with the name of this project, and
I think it was like, oh, we're hidden and we
come out every once in a while. That's kind of
like what I think they were going for. This image
was a ciphered with a specific code to get the message,
you know, this one message that was hidden in there,
and the person trying to solve it would get directed
to this very specific link, where then they encountered even
(02:50):
more puzzles. But this wasn't some simple puzzle they can
solve in half an hour or anything like that. This
one had included like Mayan numerals, mixed letters with no
specific order, King Arthur, and the Holy Grail. After that
cicada image, it will lead you to like a website.
This website leads you to like this thing. This thing
gives a hint in the book. This book gets a
(03:12):
hint in something else. Like all these things. It was
just like a chain of things, right, like just random
numbers and you're like, what does this mean? And you
find a link to somewhere and then you get somewhere, right.
So people were trying to really figure it out, but
soon to discover that the puzzle was taking a life
on its own, going from regular forums on the Internet
to real life scenarios things like a phone number that
(03:36):
you need to call, and then you would get another clue.
You suppose you're dialing too, and then they say, very good,
you have done well. There are three prime numbers associated
with the original final dot jpeg image three three zero
one is one of them. You will have to find
the other two. Multiply all three of these numbers together
(03:59):
and add a dot on the end to find the
next step. Good luck, goodbye. Prime numbers are natural numbers
that follow specific rule in mathematics right to be considered prime.
And these participants would then end up at this one website.
When they got there, they would see this other image
of a cicada with a countdown to it. Once a
(04:19):
countdown ended, the website displayed this strange set of numbers.
Eventually they found out that these were GPS coordinates, and
people were told to visit the one closest to them
for a paper with a cicada and a QR code
on it. I'd be nervous to go, but people went.
They scanned the code and then they would discover something else,
(04:41):
a strange set of words. Turns out it was a
poem by William Gibson A Crippa a book of the dead.
The poem itself was released under mysterious circumstances. It was
supposedly intended to be only read once and originally was
published in a floppy disk only right. But anyway, this puzzle,
(05:02):
Cicada three three zero one as it became known, eventually
led participants deeper into it with the promise that whoever
reached the end would be in communication with Cicada via email.
Some of these clues even led people to the dark web.
Who was Cicada? Like, what was it? Some people thought
(05:25):
that it was a part of the government CIA, the FBI,
because they had also been known to make puzzles and
quests that were very similar to three three zero one.
But they could have been just a group of nerds
and there just could have been like, oh, let's make
a secret organization puzzle and then do that. They could
have been just a group of people who wanted just
smart people to join them, you know. And there was
(05:47):
a lot of speculation there what was this? Also the
idea that maybe this was a hoax, it was an
internet troll. Yeah, But there's one more popular theory that
comes from this leaked email from someone who's supposed to
won the competition in twenty twelve. You have all wondered
who we are, and so we shall now tell you.
(06:08):
We are an international group. We have no name, we
have no symbol, we have no membership rosters, we do
not have a public website, and we do not advertise ourselves.
We are a group of individuals who have proven ourselves
much like you have by completing this recruitment contest, and
we are drawn together by common beliefs. A careful reading
(06:29):
of the texts used in the contest would have revealed
some of these beliefs, that tyranny and oppression of any
kind must end, that censorship is wrong, and that privacy
is an inalienable right. Cicada went very quiet, very very
very quickly, and then even the anonymous chat room on
the dark Web for the winners to talk to each
(06:50):
other was shut down, and then since twenty sixteen, no
one has heard anything from them. There was this teenager
from San Francisco who was a self taught programmer and
now he's pretty famous. His user name technology but tekk
dotno logy technology like that was a cool way to
spell it. Anyway. He was supposed to be selected for
(07:12):
entry into this group. Another winner was this thirty four
year old crypto security researcher and developer from Sweden, a
man named Joel Erickson. He finished all the puzzles, but
he started a week later than the rest, so he
was too late. He wasn't accepted into Cicada. Another winner
was a fifteen year old from Roanoke, Virginia. His name
(07:33):
was Marcus Wanner, who is now a coder and creator
at Virginia Tech. With every winner, there were very very
smart people who were just unable to solve these puzzles.
So these were like the top people that we're able
to get through the end. I make it sound like simple,
but it's supposedly one of the tougher things. It was
a huge mystery when it came out. People were like,
who are these people? Who's Cicada? And if you watch
(07:54):
any documentaries on this, because there's an actual, really good
YouTube documentary on Cicada three three zero one details and
all this stuff, you can tell like this was a
big thing back then.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Well, it's just like the stuff that got attention is
so commonplace now, Like someone doing that, no one would
bat Andy, I'll do your puzzle while I'm sitting on
the toilet, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
It's creepy. The last thing I know about Cicada when
they sent a message out to people saying that they
weren't allowing hackers and coders and like all these people
that were team up to try to solve the puzzle,
because they said, quote, they want the best, not the followers.
So you could tell they were looking for someone specific,
(08:36):
and I think the reason why is what made it
more like, wait, why are you looking for? These people
are doing is supposed to Cicada also sent a message
in twenty seventeen unconfirmed. I was really them warning about
this information, kind of like anonymous style, like oh, don't lie.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I mean, it would also make sense if they did
become anonymous or that group never did anything.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Very creepy stuff early Internet, and I'm telling you those
were the days.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Those were the days. We're going back to the year
two thousand.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
You happily are logging onto AOL and you hear that beer.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
But anyway, you only have an hour.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Before your mom gets home and kicks you off the
phone line, so you've got to.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Get in there. You know, Y two K is coming gone.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And now we are firmly into the twenty first century,
and you know what, You're curious about what's going to.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Happen in the future.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
So you log onto an online form called the Time
Travelers Institute for a laugh. It's just an online message ward,
and there's a new post by a username you've never
seen before, someone named time Traveler zero. And time Traveler
zero claims to be an American soldier from the year
twenty third six based into imp of Florida. He's posting
(10:02):
on this form while he's on a stopover in the
year two thousand for personal reasons, which is to collect
pictures lost in the future civil.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
War and to visit his family.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So one of the first things he posted on this
form was his time machine and its operations manual. And
according to these posts, the device was installed in the
rear of a nineteen sixty six Chevrolet Corvette convertible and
then later post mentioned a nineteen eighty seven truck with
four wheel drive. And do you think to yourself, huh,
(10:37):
could this guy really be from the future. So you
find more posts from this guy on the art bel
Coast to Coast website post to post where he calls
himself John Tider.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
He said he was assigned.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
To a government time travel project that is part of
a mission where he was sent back to nineteen seventy
five to eve an IBM fifty one hundred computer, which
needs to debug various legacy computer programs that exist in
twenty thirty six, a problem referenced in the Unix Year twenty.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Thirty eight problem.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
The IBM fifty one hundred runs on apl and basic
programming languages. Tyder said that he had been selected for
this mission because his paternal grandfather was directly involved in
the original assembly of the programming of the fifty one hundred.
He attempted to provide proof of this by describing unpublicized
(11:39):
features of the fifty one hundred, which led people to
believe that a computer scientist must have been behind these postings.
Tider also said that for several months he was trying
to warn anyone who would listen about the potential threat
of basically bad cow disease that would be spread through
beef products, about the possibility of an upcoming civil war
(12:02):
in the United States. One thing about him is that
he basically answered almost every question that was asked him
over four months online. So you know, he posted these
things on these forums and then answered these questions. But
because of that, many people neglected to read his previous
posts and ask similar questions over and over and over again,
(12:24):
and you get a glimpse of him being like snarky
and stappy. So Tighter's final post was in two thousand
and one. On March twenty first, two thousand and one,
John Tyder told us he would be leaving our time
and returning to twenty thirty six. After that, he was
never heard from again. Speculation and the investigation of who
John Tider was and why he was online continues to
(12:48):
this day.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Actually, here are some of the predictions that he.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Made, and granted, some of them have definitely not come
to pass, but all of them are written in.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
A way where it's like, huh, maybe the happen.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Although he frequently invoked the many world's interpretation of quantum mechanics,
which is the multiverse sery. Whereas the events from his
timeline may differ from our own, Tighter also said that
the differences would be minimal. The United States would have
a civil war over order and rights, and he described
(13:26):
it beginning in two thousand and five, with civil unrest
and the presidential election of the previous year. Tighter then
went on to talk about it having a Waco type
event every month that steadily gets worse, and pretty much
everyone's doorstep would erupt into war by two thousand and eight.
(13:47):
As a result, the United States would split into five
regions based on a variety of factors, including different military objectives.
According to Tighter, the civil war would end in twenty
fifteen with a brief, intense World War three, which Tighter
referred to as end Day. Tighter did not give the
exact cause of the World War three scenario, but he
(14:09):
said that hostilities were led by border clashes and overpopulation,
and he also pointed out that the contemporary Arab Israeli
conflict was not the cause of the war, but a
milestone that preceded it, which I think is interesting because
that's always happening.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It's still happening now.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Okay, So here are some of his actual comments that
I'm going to read. November fourth, two thousand, he wrote,
a world war in twenty fifteen killed nearly three billion people.
Another comment, there's a civil war in the United States
that starts in two thousand and five. The conflict flares
up and down.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
For ten years. In twenty fifteen, Russia Lance is a
nuclear strike against the major cities in the US, which
is the other side of the Civil war from my perspective,
China and Europe. The United States counterattack.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
The US cities are destroyed along the afe the American
Federal Empire. Thus we in the country won. The European
Union and China were also destroyed. Russia is now our
largest trading partner and the capital of the US has
moved to Omaha, Nebraska. Someone asked what even started the war?
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Can it be stopped?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And then he wrote the war is a result of
faulty politics and desperation for Western leadership during the US
Civil War. Yes, I suppose you could stop it. Someone
asked what's the extent of presidential power? In two thousand
and thirty six, the presidential office is far more diluted
and decentralized than it is here. The powers of the
(15:38):
national government are more defined and reside more at the
county level and state level. The job of president has
been split into an office of five for four main reasons.
With five presidents, foreign policy is more consistent, power shifting
between the parties has less of an impact, and overall
the government. Individual strengths between the president add to the
(16:01):
strength of the overall office, and one president is elected
for each major area in the United States because we're
split into five forever. And then after the war, early
new communities gathered around current universities. That's where the libraries were.
I went to school at Fort uf which is now
called the University of Florida.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Not too much as.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Different, except the military is a large part of people's life,
and we spend a great deal of time in fields
and farms at the university or quote unquote fort Isn't
that weirdly weirdly interesting, weirdly visual as well? Here are
some things he wrote in response to people on November six,
(16:43):
two thousand. No, the ice caps are not melting any
faster than they are now. People raise a great deal
of their own food and do.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
More farm work, yes, compared to now. We do work
long hours. After the war.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
My father made a living selling oranges up and down
the west coast of Florida. My closest friend raises horses,
and another works for a company that maintains wireless internet nodes.
The Internet's still alive and well. In the future, people
spend more time talking because life is more centered on
community when I'm with my parents. I live in a
community made up of treehouses on a large river in Florida.
(17:18):
The river floods sometimes and we have access to the Gulf.
Most of our neighbors make a living off the sea
or in moving cargo by boat. And then someone asked,
what's music like in twenty thirty six? The days of
megastars playing multi track studio produced music and lip syncing
on huge stages are pretty much isolated to your period
(17:39):
of time, which I think is funny because that is
definitely still going, still going, but it's definitely a mark
of our time. Like everything else, music is less centralized.
The general trend is away from computer generated music and
more toward real people playing real instruments. I would compare
it to what you see in Western movies. We do
(17:59):
have hospitals, but there are a lot more family doctors
and house calls as compared to what you are used to.
There's no real organized healthcare. If you get a serious disease,
you die, which is kind of what happens now.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So uhh yeah, I mean it's normal. Yeah, we're used
to it.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Someone else, what's the entertainment industry like in twenty thirty six. Again,
the entertainment industry is less centralized. There are movies and TV,
but everything is distributed over the net and more people
produce their own quote unquote shows, which is something that
is happening, which is interesting to be able to have
predicted that in two thousand. Yes, we have phones, but
(18:38):
the services through the web. Most power generation is localized. Yes,
solar is big. There is a thought that a singularity
generator could also be used, but most people are against that.
And then he there's one comment that I just found
very weird. Have you considered that your society might be
better off if half of you were dead? He said that,
(19:00):
which not to condone it, but after the plague, that's
when we got the renaissance, so I can see what
he's saying. But also, you can't pick and choose that
three billion that's gonna die. That's a whole traumatized generation
of people.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Creepy, and I just imagine that, Uh.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
It's pretty creepy.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Someone asked him about aliens, right, and we know the
government's confirmed aliens now or whatever UFOs they've done that,
and no one cared tighter suggests that UFOs and extraterrestrials
might be time travelers with superior time machines from further
into the future.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Than his own timeline. So that's what he said.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And then also they haven't figured out anything in his
timeline about UFOs or aliens. Interesting, and they've never quite
pinned down who did it.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
A TV show in Italy hired a private investigator to
try and figure out who wrote this good luck.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
They tracked it to like a po box in Kissing Me, Florida.
In two thousand and nine, an investigation suggested the entire
affair was a hoax created by Larry Harber, a Florida
entertainment lawyer, and his brother John Rick Harber.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
A computer scientist. But interesting, they've never verified these claims.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
They're written in such a generic way that you could
be like, oh, yeah, all that's happening now.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's like those people that can predict the future, like
treat you that's a good I mean, if it's all
made up, If it's all just a made up story,
very interesting and very interesting way to spread it.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, tighter uses the whole like Everett Wheeler model of
quantum physics, known as the many worlds interpretation aka the multiverse,
which we all understand now because of Marvel movies. And
also because he told us the information that he told
us that apparently started a new time stream, so the
(20:56):
events that Tighter described would occur somewhat differently than it
had in his home time stream. So this makes all
of his predictions non falsifiable or quote unquote true.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Fan corner corner.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, this comments from Peace is better than Chicken and Rice.
And they gave us two stars on Apple Podcasts and
it's titled It's a little scary because I'm a kid.
If I was a grown up, I would love this show.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
And that's all it says.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I just thought that was so cute.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
It could be a little scary, although sometimes I think
we are a kid's show, but I guess we do
get a little dark. Wait until you're an adult and
then come back and give us five stars.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Okay, kid, And in.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
The meantime, all the grown ups go ahead and Leo's
five stars to make up for this review.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yes, please, but it's so cute, but yes, leave us
five stars to fix our algorithm, please thank you and
leave us nice little comments and won't read them on
the air.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
So, do you guys know of any Internet mysteries, anything
that just creeped you out? Did you have any experiences
with the early Internet or just Internet in general. It's
a creepy place.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I think it can be. Yeah, it's pretty dark.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Like in the future, it's going to be like the
source of like scary creepy things, because now it's more
like people aren't going out. We're not like roaming in
the woods anymore because we're running out of woods.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Oh God, that was sad. That's a sad comment. But yes,
that is true. You really nailed this outro. I guess
let's just put out the fire and get out of here.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, please leave us a review, don't forget a tap
follow on your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah, and send this to someone you like. Campfire Story
is hosted by Michelle Newman.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
And Edwin cabrub Yes. This podcast was edited and sound
design by Sarah Vorhez Wendel a VW sound Make
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Sure you follow us wherever you get your podm
Whoever reached the end would be in communication with Cicada
via email. Some of these clues even led people to
the dark Web. Get ready for a campfire story.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle, and we'll share spooky stories with
playful banter that'll keep you up at night.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
So throw some wood on the fire and put a
wiener on a stick. We're telling you a campfire story tonight.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Once again. Here we are in the woods. Everybody, Yes,
here we are.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Today's topic, our theme, if you will, for our adventure
today will.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Be Internet mysteries to dum. I think I've said it before.
I find internet stuff, early internet stuff very creepy, just
because it was kind of like the Wild West. A
lot of kids have no idea what it was like. Anyway,
this one takes place in twenty twelve, when the world
(01:06):
was supposed to end the first time or the second time,
because the first one was hy two k that I remember.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
That's funny because that comes up in my story too.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
But what yeah whoa Okay, So it was January fourth,
twenty twelve, and people are posting in these forums and
all these very smart people are typing up apps and
they're like just kind of updating everybody. Here's what I
had made, here's another thing did. And suppose you're scrolling
through all this stuff and all of a sudden you
(01:34):
see this post. Hello, we are looking for highly intelligent individuals.
To find them, we have devised a test. There is
a message hidden in this image. Find it and it
will lead you on the road to us. We look
forward to meeting the few that will make it all
the way through. Good luck three three zero one. If
(01:57):
you go back to the original post on the screen,
there's the traditional view of a forum, which back then
was way simpler than what it is now. It's not
quite Reddit, but it's still the same style. The challenge
was to decipher and decrypt this message in order to
obtain another clue. Well, the image was that of a cicada,
and a cicada is like, this is a bug. It's
(02:18):
supposed to come out of the ground every seventeen years
in swarms.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I think a lot of people find cicadas annoying.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
I think they had a huge cicada year this year.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, well it sounds cool and it actually kind of
had to go with the name of this project, and
I think it was like, oh, we're hidden and we
come out every once in a while. That's kind of
like what I think they were going for. This image
was a ciphered with a specific code to get the message,
you know, this one message that was hidden in there,
and the person trying to solve it would get directed
to this very specific link, where then they encountered even
(02:50):
more puzzles. But this wasn't some simple puzzle they can
solve in half an hour or anything like that. This
one had included like Mayan numerals, mixed letters with no
specific order, King Arthur, and the Holy Grail. After that
cicada image, it will lead you to like a website.
This website leads you to like this thing. This thing
gives a hint in the book. This book gets a
(03:12):
hint in something else. Like all these things. It was
just like a chain of things, right, like just random
numbers and you're like, what does this mean? And you
find a link to somewhere and then you get somewhere, right.
So people were trying to really figure it out, but
soon to discover that the puzzle was taking a life
on its own, going from regular forums on the Internet
to real life scenarios things like a phone number that
(03:36):
you need to call, and then you would get another clue.
You suppose you're dialing too, and then they say, very good,
you have done well. There are three prime numbers associated
with the original final dot jpeg image three three zero
one is one of them. You will have to find
the other two. Multiply all three of these numbers together
(03:59):
and add a dot on the end to find the
next step. Good luck, goodbye. Prime numbers are natural numbers
that follow specific rule in mathematics right to be considered prime.
And these participants would then end up at this one website.
When they got there, they would see this other image
of a cicada with a countdown to it. Once a
(04:19):
countdown ended, the website displayed this strange set of numbers.
Eventually they found out that these were GPS coordinates, and
people were told to visit the one closest to them
for a paper with a cicada and a QR code
on it. I'd be nervous to go, but people went.
They scanned the code and then they would discover something else,
(04:41):
a strange set of words. Turns out it was a
poem by William Gibson A Crippa a book of the dead.
The poem itself was released under mysterious circumstances. It was
supposedly intended to be only read once and originally was
published in a floppy disk only right. But anyway, this puzzle,
(05:02):
Cicada three three zero one as it became known, eventually
led participants deeper into it with the promise that whoever
reached the end would be in communication with Cicada via email.
Some of these clues even led people to the dark web.
Who was Cicada? Like, what was it? Some people thought
(05:25):
that it was a part of the government CIA, the FBI,
because they had also been known to make puzzles and
quests that were very similar to three three zero one.
But they could have been just a group of nerds
and there just could have been like, oh, let's make
a secret organization puzzle and then do that. They could
have been just a group of people who wanted just
smart people to join them, you know. And there was
(05:47):
a lot of speculation there what was this? Also the
idea that maybe this was a hoax, it was an
internet troll. Yeah, But there's one more popular theory that
comes from this leaked email from someone who's supposed to
won the competition in twenty twelve. You have all wondered
who we are, and so we shall now tell you.
(06:08):
We are an international group. We have no name, we
have no symbol, we have no membership rosters, we do
not have a public website, and we do not advertise ourselves.
We are a group of individuals who have proven ourselves
much like you have by completing this recruitment contest, and
we are drawn together by common beliefs. A careful reading
(06:29):
of the texts used in the contest would have revealed
some of these beliefs, that tyranny and oppression of any
kind must end, that censorship is wrong, and that privacy
is an inalienable right. Cicada went very quiet, very very
very quickly, and then even the anonymous chat room on
the dark Web for the winners to talk to each
(06:50):
other was shut down, and then since twenty sixteen, no
one has heard anything from them. There was this teenager
from San Francisco who was a self taught programmer and
now he's pretty famous. His user name technology but tekk
dotno logy technology like that was a cool way to
spell it. Anyway. He was supposed to be selected for
(07:12):
entry into this group. Another winner was this thirty four
year old crypto security researcher and developer from Sweden, a
man named Joel Erickson. He finished all the puzzles, but
he started a week later than the rest, so he
was too late. He wasn't accepted into Cicada. Another winner
was a fifteen year old from Roanoke, Virginia. His name
(07:33):
was Marcus Wanner, who is now a coder and creator
at Virginia Tech. With every winner, there were very very
smart people who were just unable to solve these puzzles.
So these were like the top people that we're able
to get through the end. I make it sound like simple,
but it's supposedly one of the tougher things. It was
a huge mystery when it came out. People were like,
who are these people? Who's Cicada? And if you watch
(07:54):
any documentaries on this, because there's an actual, really good
YouTube documentary on Cicada three three zero one details and
all this stuff, you can tell like this was a
big thing back then.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Well, it's just like the stuff that got attention is
so commonplace now, Like someone doing that, no one would
bat Andy, I'll do your puzzle while I'm sitting on
the toilet, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
It's creepy. The last thing I know about Cicada when
they sent a message out to people saying that they
weren't allowing hackers and coders and like all these people
that were team up to try to solve the puzzle,
because they said, quote, they want the best, not the followers.
So you could tell they were looking for someone specific,
(08:36):
and I think the reason why is what made it
more like, wait, why are you looking for? These people
are doing is supposed to Cicada also sent a message
in twenty seventeen unconfirmed. I was really them warning about
this information, kind of like anonymous style, like oh, don't lie.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I mean, it would also make sense if they did
become anonymous or that group never did anything.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Very creepy stuff early Internet, and I'm telling you those
were the days.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Those were the days. We're going back to the year
two thousand.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
You happily are logging onto AOL and you hear that beer.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
But anyway, you only have an hour.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Before your mom gets home and kicks you off the
phone line, so you've got to.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Get in there. You know, Y two K is coming gone.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And now we are firmly into the twenty first century,
and you know what, You're curious about what's going to.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Happen in the future.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
So you log onto an online form called the Time
Travelers Institute for a laugh. It's just an online message ward,
and there's a new post by a username you've never
seen before, someone named time Traveler zero. And time Traveler
zero claims to be an American soldier from the year
twenty third six based into imp of Florida. He's posting
(10:02):
on this form while he's on a stopover in the
year two thousand for personal reasons, which is to collect
pictures lost in the future civil.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
War and to visit his family.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So one of the first things he posted on this
form was his time machine and its operations manual. And
according to these posts, the device was installed in the
rear of a nineteen sixty six Chevrolet Corvette convertible and
then later post mentioned a nineteen eighty seven truck with
four wheel drive. And do you think to yourself, huh,
(10:37):
could this guy really be from the future. So you
find more posts from this guy on the art bel
Coast to Coast website post to post where he calls
himself John Tider.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
He said he was assigned.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
To a government time travel project that is part of
a mission where he was sent back to nineteen seventy
five to eve an IBM fifty one hundred computer, which
needs to debug various legacy computer programs that exist in
twenty thirty six, a problem referenced in the Unix Year twenty.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Thirty eight problem.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
The IBM fifty one hundred runs on apl and basic
programming languages. Tyder said that he had been selected for
this mission because his paternal grandfather was directly involved in
the original assembly of the programming of the fifty one hundred.
He attempted to provide proof of this by describing unpublicized
(11:39):
features of the fifty one hundred, which led people to
believe that a computer scientist must have been behind these postings.
Tider also said that for several months he was trying
to warn anyone who would listen about the potential threat
of basically bad cow disease that would be spread through
beef products, about the possibility of an upcoming civil war
(12:02):
in the United States. One thing about him is that
he basically answered almost every question that was asked him
over four months online. So you know, he posted these
things on these forums and then answered these questions. But
because of that, many people neglected to read his previous
posts and ask similar questions over and over and over again,
(12:24):
and you get a glimpse of him being like snarky
and stappy. So Tighter's final post was in two thousand
and one. On March twenty first, two thousand and one,
John Tyder told us he would be leaving our time
and returning to twenty thirty six. After that, he was
never heard from again. Speculation and the investigation of who
John Tider was and why he was online continues to
(12:48):
this day.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Actually, here are some of the predictions that he.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Made, and granted, some of them have definitely not come
to pass, but all of them are written in.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
A way where it's like, huh, maybe the happen.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Although he frequently invoked the many world's interpretation of quantum mechanics,
which is the multiverse sery. Whereas the events from his
timeline may differ from our own, Tighter also said that
the differences would be minimal. The United States would have
a civil war over order and rights, and he described
(13:26):
it beginning in two thousand and five, with civil unrest
and the presidential election of the previous year. Tighter then
went on to talk about it having a Waco type
event every month that steadily gets worse, and pretty much
everyone's doorstep would erupt into war by two thousand and eight.
(13:47):
As a result, the United States would split into five
regions based on a variety of factors, including different military objectives.
According to Tighter, the civil war would end in twenty
fifteen with a brief, intense World War three, which Tighter
referred to as end Day. Tighter did not give the
exact cause of the World War three scenario, but he
(14:09):
said that hostilities were led by border clashes and overpopulation,
and he also pointed out that the contemporary Arab Israeli
conflict was not the cause of the war, but a
milestone that preceded it, which I think is interesting because
that's always happening.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It's still happening now.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Okay, So here are some of his actual comments that
I'm going to read. November fourth, two thousand, he wrote,
a world war in twenty fifteen killed nearly three billion people.
Another comment, there's a civil war in the United States
that starts in two thousand and five. The conflict flares
up and down.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
For ten years. In twenty fifteen, Russia Lance is a
nuclear strike against the major cities in the US, which
is the other side of the Civil war from my perspective,
China and Europe. The United States counterattack.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
The US cities are destroyed along the afe the American
Federal Empire. Thus we in the country won. The European
Union and China were also destroyed. Russia is now our
largest trading partner and the capital of the US has
moved to Omaha, Nebraska. Someone asked what even started the war?
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Can it be stopped?
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And then he wrote the war is a result of
faulty politics and desperation for Western leadership during the US
Civil War. Yes, I suppose you could stop it. Someone
asked what's the extent of presidential power? In two thousand
and thirty six, the presidential office is far more diluted
and decentralized than it is here. The powers of the
(15:38):
national government are more defined and reside more at the
county level and state level. The job of president has
been split into an office of five for four main reasons.
With five presidents, foreign policy is more consistent, power shifting
between the parties has less of an impact, and overall
the government. Individual strengths between the president add to the
(16:01):
strength of the overall office, and one president is elected
for each major area in the United States because we're
split into five forever. And then after the war, early
new communities gathered around current universities. That's where the libraries were.
I went to school at Fort uf which is now
called the University of Florida.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Not too much as.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Different, except the military is a large part of people's life,
and we spend a great deal of time in fields
and farms at the university or quote unquote fort Isn't
that weirdly weirdly interesting, weirdly visual as well? Here are
some things he wrote in response to people on November six,
(16:43):
two thousand. No, the ice caps are not melting any
faster than they are now. People raise a great deal
of their own food and do.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
More farm work, yes, compared to now. We do work
long hours. After the war.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
My father made a living selling oranges up and down
the west coast of Florida. My closest friend raises horses,
and another works for a company that maintains wireless internet nodes.
The Internet's still alive and well. In the future, people
spend more time talking because life is more centered on
community when I'm with my parents. I live in a
community made up of treehouses on a large river in Florida.
(17:18):
The river floods sometimes and we have access to the Gulf.
Most of our neighbors make a living off the sea
or in moving cargo by boat. And then someone asked,
what's music like in twenty thirty six? The days of
megastars playing multi track studio produced music and lip syncing
on huge stages are pretty much isolated to your period
(17:39):
of time, which I think is funny because that is
definitely still going, still going, but it's definitely a mark
of our time. Like everything else, music is less centralized.
The general trend is away from computer generated music and
more toward real people playing real instruments. I would compare
it to what you see in Western movies. We do
(17:59):
have hospitals, but there are a lot more family doctors
and house calls as compared to what you are used to.
There's no real organized healthcare. If you get a serious disease,
you die, which is kind of what happens now.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So uhh yeah, I mean it's normal. Yeah, we're used
to it.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Someone else, what's the entertainment industry like in twenty thirty six. Again,
the entertainment industry is less centralized. There are movies and TV,
but everything is distributed over the net and more people
produce their own quote unquote shows, which is something that
is happening, which is interesting to be able to have
predicted that in two thousand. Yes, we have phones, but
(18:38):
the services through the web. Most power generation is localized. Yes,
solar is big. There is a thought that a singularity
generator could also be used, but most people are against that.
And then he there's one comment that I just found
very weird. Have you considered that your society might be
better off if half of you were dead? He said that,
(19:00):
which not to condone it, but after the plague, that's
when we got the renaissance, so I can see what
he's saying. But also, you can't pick and choose that
three billion that's gonna die. That's a whole traumatized generation
of people.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Creepy, and I just imagine that, Uh.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
It's pretty creepy.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Someone asked him about aliens, right, and we know the
government's confirmed aliens now or whatever UFOs they've done that,
and no one cared tighter suggests that UFOs and extraterrestrials
might be time travelers with superior time machines from further
into the future.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Than his own timeline. So that's what he said.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And then also they haven't figured out anything in his
timeline about UFOs or aliens. Interesting, and they've never quite
pinned down who did it.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
A TV show in Italy hired a private investigator to
try and figure out who wrote this good luck.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
They tracked it to like a po box in Kissing Me, Florida.
In two thousand and nine, an investigation suggested the entire
affair was a hoax created by Larry Harber, a Florida
entertainment lawyer, and his brother John Rick Harber.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
A computer scientist. But interesting, they've never verified these claims.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
They're written in such a generic way that you could
be like, oh, yeah, all that's happening now.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It's like those people that can predict the future, like
treat you that's a good I mean, if it's all
made up, If it's all just a made up story,
very interesting and very interesting way to spread it.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, tighter uses the whole like Everett Wheeler model of
quantum physics, known as the many worlds interpretation aka the multiverse,
which we all understand now because of Marvel movies. And
also because he told us the information that he told
us that apparently started a new time stream, so the
(20:56):
events that Tighter described would occur somewhat differently than it
had in his home time stream. So this makes all
of his predictions non falsifiable or quote unquote true.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Fan corner corner.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, this comments from Peace is better than Chicken and Rice.
And they gave us two stars on Apple Podcasts and
it's titled It's a little scary because I'm a kid.
If I was a grown up, I would love this show.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
And that's all it says.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I just thought that was so cute.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
It could be a little scary, although sometimes I think
we are a kid's show, but I guess we do
get a little dark. Wait until you're an adult and
then come back and give us five stars.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Okay, kid, And in.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
The meantime, all the grown ups go ahead and Leo's
five stars to make up for this review.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yes, please, but it's so cute, but yes, leave us
five stars to fix our algorithm, please thank you and
leave us nice little comments and won't read them on
the air.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
So, do you guys know of any Internet mysteries, anything
that just creeped you out? Did you have any experiences
with the early Internet or just Internet in general. It's
a creepy place.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
I think it can be. Yeah, it's pretty dark.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Like in the future, it's going to be like the
source of like scary creepy things, because now it's more
like people aren't going out. We're not like roaming in
the woods anymore because we're running out of woods.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Oh God, that was sad. That's a sad comment. But yes,
that is true. You really nailed this outro. I guess
let's just put out the fire and get out of here.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, please leave us a review, don't forget a tap
follow on your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Yeah, and send this to someone you like. Campfire Story
is hosted by Michelle Newman.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
And Edwin cabrub Yes. This podcast was edited and sound
design by Sarah Vorhez Wendel a VW sound Make
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Sure you follow us wherever you get your podm
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