Gon. Here is everything advantageous to life.
Ant. True; save means to live.
The Tempest. Act ii. Sc. 1
The island is a manmade device designed to assure the survival of the human race if the world goes through a nuclear disaster.
If the island is "triggered" it will create a field to disrupt
any and all craft within a certain perimeter. Additionally, the beacon
begins with the broadcast of the "numbers". This would cause
all vessels to find safe harbor (due to disruption), and the only beacon
available would be the island's broadcast, making it the only possible
destination.
Some points to back up the theory:
-Island has manmade features dating back to at least the time of the 50's
(items in Danielle's place)
-Island has inhabitants that go back at least 40-60 years (Adam and Eve)
-Island has had a statistically skewed amount of crash landings
Now for the numbers correlation:
First the math:
2005 - 4 = 2001
2001- 8 +1 = 1994 (I'll explain the plus 1's below)
1994 - 15 +1 =1980
1980 - 16 +1 =1965
1965 - 23 = 1942
So the years from this are:
2005, 2001, 1994, 1980, 1965, 1942
So each time the island is triggered an new number is added to the beacon,
this would log the occurances of the trigger in a simple yet informative
way.
*the plus 1's in the math are to compensate for the duration of the trigger
period. The time period during "repopulation" is not a constant,
but wouls last a few months atleast, causing overlaps into the next calendar
year.
Here are the events that triggered the island
1942: Island is populated with first team of "Adam and Eve" to
assure the human race lives on in the event of nuclear war.
1965: November, 1965: Power Failure and Faulty Bomb Alarms Special bomb alarms were installed near military facilities and near cities in the U.S.A., so that the locations of nuclear bursts would be transmitted before the expected communication failure. The alarm circuits were set up to display a red signal at command posts the instant that the flash of a nuclear detonation reached the sensor and before the blast put it out of action. Normally the display would show a green signal, and yellow if the sensor was not operating or was out of communication for any other reason.
During the commercial power failure in the NE United States, in November 1965, displays from all the bomb alarms for the area should have shown yellow. In fact, two of them from different cities showed red because of circuit errors. The effect was consistent with the power failure being due to nuclear weapons explosions, and the Command Center of the Office of Emergency Planning went on full alert.
1980: June, 1980: Faulty Computer Chip At 2:25 a.m. on June 3, 1980, displays started showing various numbers of missiles detected. Preparations for retaliation were instituted, including nuclear bomber crews staring their engines, launch of Pacific Command's Airborne Command Post, and readying of Minutemen missiles for launch.
While the cause of the false alarm was still being investigated 3 days later, the same thing happened and again preparations were made for retaliation. The cause was a single faulty chip that was failing in a random fashion. The basic design of the system was faulty, allowing this single failure to cause a deceptive display at several command posts.
***So two false alarms form the faulty automated system, US changes over to a manual trigger when nuclear threat is determined by the powers that be.
1994: Gulf War One: Retaliation from Arab nations was
on everyone's minds, and the expectation that Nuclear weapons were in
their hands was prominent. System "triggered"
2001: September 11th: Obviously, Anything was deemed possible after watching the twin towers fall. System triggered
2005: System triggered, we don't know why, we just know the survivors seem to be alone.
So who was trapped on the island at each "trigger?"
1942: Adam and Eve
1965: "Others"
1980: Ethan and?
1994: Danielle's team
2001: Drug plane
2005: Flight 815
To Summarize:
The island thinks a nuclear disaster occurs and gets humans to the island.
It seems kind of unethical to possibly sacrifice human life like this,
but we're talking about the assurance of the human race. Even if half
the occpupants of a plane die, the survivors can repopulate the earth.
Also, the "fields" used to get the vessels there have side effects,
like the assumed side effects of magnetic fields (maybe thats what they
use, doesn't matter, they used something). this causes the hallucinations,
the odd behavior, even the potential "super human" traits of
Ethan and Locke.
darwindog
But, usually, in a crash like that, there would be no survivors at all - how is the device making sure everyone isn't killed in the crash that brings them to the island?
Sledgeweb
I don't know, maybe the monster. This all came about with me playing with the numbers and the corresponding years. I think any details as to how things are done is summed up by the technology of the island.
darwindog
So you add one year to eveyr other number except four, why?
Also, if the system is so intricate that it is supposed to insure the
survival of humanity, why would it cause a plane with only two people
in it (the drug smuggler's plane) to crash?
Sarahs Monkey
This goes along with the psychic telling Claire she must be the one to raise the baby and then making sure that she was on that particular plane.
From the time that happened, I started thinking about the island as a
place sheltering the last humans left on earth.
mzsandeestar
Hi, first-poster here. Been reading this board for quite a while, though.
I think your theory is very interesting, since it also explains why the
42 seems to be detached from the rest of the numbers as it is suggested
by the way the numbers are seen on the hatch.
But, I think there's also some major problems with it:
- Danielle and her team have been on the island for at least 16 years
(possibly longer, since we do not know how much time exactly passed between
them being stranded on the island and actually finding the radio tower
and changing the signal), they stranded because they were mislead by the
numbers' broadcast
- Hurley got the numbers through a chain of people that leads back to
the communication officers hearing the numbers being broadcasted sometime
in the 1940s...
Thus, the string of numbers has been "on air" for about at least
60 years. This doesn't match with the assumption that the numbers represent
a documentation of visits to the island or the arrival of new castaways
on it.
What tickles me further is:
- even if the "trigger events" you mention seem plausible, there's
a lot of other events in the 20th century which one would expect to qualify
as trigger events. Such as the Bay of Pigs invasion that put the world
on the verge of nuclear war (which was in 1961), or the Chernobyl plant
meltdown in 1985. There's problably more of those examples.
- as previously mentioned here, two male drug smugglers don't fit with
the concept of sparing humans for procreation
- the mysterious events on the island seem to keep the island's castaways
from forming a society of their own (which would be the island's (or its
creators) intention if it where an assurance device, wouldn't it? At least
this applies to Danielle, since the members of her team killed each other
voltaire
I really like this theory but I agree with voltaire: for it to be plausibe, we need to find some global link between these dates that doesn't require an a priori assumption about something that happened later. As to the massive casualties involved, that's an issue for EVERY theory that presupposes human (or sentient) intervention.
drabauer
This theory does make sense in some areas, and it's well-thought out, but my question is, if this is an island to insure the human race continues, why did Danielle say the "sickness" came, why would an island to breed humanity on cause people to become sick and crazy? And why would there be a "monster" or something in the woods killing people?
Kathy Fan 2
I came up with this theory from playing around with the numbers, not the other way around. I know it has more holes than the Alpine Lace swiss on my sandwich, but some of the pioints i can reply to:
-Danielle is crazy, anything that relies on her word or take on a situation
is null and void in my book. She didn't know how long she was on the island.
She killed everyone she was stranded with, and she's changed her story
as to why she was on the island in the first place. I suspect she is the
ultimate red herring. Just a crazy lady throwing a wrench in the works.....
-I don't think there is a "Monster". I think there is something
protecting the island though. The only attack from said monster is the
pilot. The only hint we have at what it is, is that the sound is "familiar"
to Rose, (maybe from the Bronx, maybe from her Cher albums, who knows).
And that Locke thought it was the "most beautiful thing in the world".
Nothig very concrete at all.
-Other trigger events: The events I matched up with weren't things of
potential disaster, the two fasle alarms were actually "The United
States has been attacked with nuclear weapons" false alarms. This
is very different than JFK wonderig what the Cubans would do, these basically
said they already did the worst. The more recent events seem big, but
maybe the whole program was trashed and the island has spun off with its
inhabitants into a "bad thing" I don't know and the possibilities
are endless.
darwindog