Yeah, I know how this sounds.

I'm posting this from September 2026 because I have access to information and technology that doesn't exist in your time. I'm not going to give you my real name or anything that could identify me. I was born in 2029. I'm currently 27 years old.

I am a military communications specialist from what you would call the United States, although the country I came from is considerably different from the one you're living in now. I was sent back to 2026 for a classified historical research mission. No, I can't tell you exactly how the machine works. I can give you the basic description, though. The device doesn't "move through time" in the way a DeLorean would. It creates a controlled spacetime displacement between two reference frames. The hardware is mostly superconducting systems, extremely powerful electromagnetic equipment, and something my instructors simply called the temporal aperture. I realize that sounds like science fiction. There are a few things I can tell you about the future, though.

2051

The nuclear war begins in 2051. It doesn't begin with somebody waking up one morning and deciding to launch everything. It's a chain of escalating crises. There are conventional wars first. Several governments collapse. Nuclear weapons are used tactically before anyone realizes that the old rules are gone. The strategic exchange comes later. The United States, Russia, China, and several other countries are involved. I won't give you exact casualty numbers because I've learned that people in your time will interpret any number as a prediction to obsess over. London is destroyed in early 2056. I don't mean "damaged." I mean the central part of the city is gone. I won't tell you exactly what happens because I don't know whether changing that information would alter anything, and frankly I don't want to be responsible for giving someone ideas. The interesting thing is that London isn't destroyed during the initial nuclear exchange of 2051. It happens years later. That's one of the reasons the historical accounts from your period are so misleading.

Why I'm putting this out

I don't expect you to believe me. Actually, I'm counting on most of you not believing me. But there are things I can prove that aren't publicly known in 2026. I'll answer questions about technology, daily life, and history where I can. I won't give you winning lottery numbers. I won't tell you who becomes president. I won't provide instructions for making weapons. And I'm not going to post coordinates to anything. Ask me questions.

Edit: Yes, I know the obvious problem with the date. If you're reading this in 2026, you have no way of distinguishing a genuine time traveler from somebody writing very convincing fiction.

That's exactly the problem.

— Roger Wolfe (2056)