LOST: “The Hunting Party”

SPOILERS AHEAD! Don’t read any further until you’ve seen this week’s episode of LOST, “The Hunting Party”

A few things about tonight’s show:

1) Alex (The French’s Woman’s child) brought Kate over when the bearded man called Alex by name.
2) The Bearded Man’s quote: “From the dawn of our species, Man has been blessed with curiosity. ” is a quote from Alvar Hanso, on the Hanso Foundation website
3) In the preview, Hurley asks Libby “Do I know you from somewhere?” Libby is a clinical psychologist…. Maybe Hurley saw her at the institution he was committed to?

Nanotechnology, the black swarm, and the Others

If you haven’t read my posting A Theory about LOST, you should probably go read that before you continue reading this page.

In the “23rd Psalm”, we got a really good look at the monster that the crash survivors have been hearing (and seeing) on the island. So far, the only two people that have really stared down the “black swarm” are Locke and Eko.

So, what the heck is that “black swarm”? The nanotechnology theory I posted about previously explains this. The monster appears to be smoke, but is actually made of many tiny machines that communicate with each other.

The idea of many tiny machines communicating with each other isn’t all that far-fetched. Research Smart Dust at Berkeley, and at companies like Dust Networks and Crossbow is being done right now. A few years ago, I worked with some of the Smart Dust “motes”. (I just worked with them, not on the actual project itself…just wanted to make that clear). They’re about the size of a quarter and have a tiny radio built into them. Each “mote” communicates with the other motes within it’s radio range to communicate the data it’s tracking. In the case of the devices I used, they communicated the temperature. The motes nearest to the base station communicate all the data from the rest of the “swarm” to that base station. The base station can then do whatever it wants with the data.

Now, extrapolate the idea of smart dust out in every direction. Make the motes as small as real dust (the size of machine in nanotechnology), increase the processing power, really soup up the software the things run, and it’s not all that far fetched to think that the smoke monster we saw would be possible. All they would need is some sort of propulsion.

I think that’s really what the monster is. A swarm of nanotech machines. “Nanites”, if you want to use a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” term. They’re moving around the island, and they’re smart. Or at least they appear that way. They could just be following their programming and have no real intelligence of their own. Right now, that’s my bet.

Eko stared the swarm down. While the swarm was in front of Eko, we saw a number of images from Eko’s past flash through the swarm itself. It appeared to read Eko’s mind. That could be just the “sci-fi” part of LOST that doesn’t need to be explained, it could be that it read Eko’s electrical brain impulses….however it did it doesn’t matter really. The main point is, it flashed scenese from Eko’s life and then moved on. Presumably, this is the same thing that happened to Locke. What was the swarm doing?

I think it was assessing whether or not Eko was an “enemy”. A enemy of what? ….Well, that’s the question. An enemy to the island? An enemy to something it’s trying to protect? Is it just deciding that anything that’s “hostile” is an enemy?

Well, that very well could be. The pilot was in a military-like uniform that the swarm could have taken as the identifying mark of someone that’s “hostile”.

Say for a moment that all that is true. There are people on the island that the swarm would kill (or worse… more on that in a minute) if it got a chance, and there are people on the island that the swarm would leave alone. If the swarm won’t touch anyone it doesn’t perceive as a threat, the vulnerable people on the island would surround themselves with people that are “safe”. I think that’s a reason they could be taking all the children. What could be safer than a child? Everyone assumes Walt was taken for his “psychic” abilities that everyone think he has; it could just be he was taken because he was a child.

So, what could be worse than being killed by that thing? I think it’s also likely that the swarm might have the ability to take people over, based on what Danielle said to Sayid (see my previous posting ).
In the comments someone asked why the word “quarantine” was inside the hatch, instead of the outside. If the swarm was able to infect people, that would be the reason. It also explains the reason Desmond has been taking the injections. If Desmond spent any time at all outside (gathering fruit, other food, wood, etc), he’d take injections to prevent the swarm from infecting him.

LOST Theories – The People That Were Taken

One of the things the writers on “LOST” do is the introduction of characters that leave you with one initial impression, and then turn that impression around. They’ve done that with Jin, Sawyer, Michael, Kate, and even to some extent Eko.

They’ve done this with the hatch, the “monster”, and even “The Others”.

The hatch turns out to actually have someone living inside it, complete with computers, food, washing machine, etc.

The “monster” that many people suggested was some sort of dinosaur, turns out to be nothing of the sort. In fact, it fits in well with my nanotechnology theory.
But….”The Others”?

Yep. I think that The Others really are taking people away, but not necessarily doing them any harm because there is something about the people that were taken that The Others need. I think it’s even possible that they’re trying to “save” these people, from what is happening on the island.

What’s the evidence of this? Well, a few things.

First, Goodwin, in his last conversation with Ana-Lucia, said as much. Second, if they wanted to out and out kill those people, there are many ways they could have done this already.

The Others had a list of the people they were going to take from the “Tailies” camp in “The Other 48 Days” episode. Those people were specifically taken. Why?

I seriously doubt that every one of them is psychic or has some sort of mental ability similiar to Walt, so we can rule that out.

Would they be pulled into The Other group to convert them to be “Others”? Why would they do that? It has to be hard enough to survive on the island alone, let alone with all the weird stuff that’s happening to them.

My theory on this is that The Others are using these people as a form of defense. Defense from what? Well, the “smoke monster” for one thing. We’ve seen two people, Locke and Eko, stand up to this thing and walk away from it. It could be that The Others have seen that some people can stand up against The Smoke, while The Others themselves can’t.

LOST Fans: Oceanicairlines.com changes

Try to get to http://www.oceanicairlines.com/, and you’ll be taken to Google instead, searching for the name “Angelus Kaduna”.

A quick read of the page shows two things metioned that should pop out at LOST fans: Nigeria and the Virgin Mary. Nigeria, of course, is where the plane that killed Boone originated. It also carried statues of the Virgin Mary. There’s a scene in this week’s previews of someone (probably Mr. Eko) breaking the Virgin Mary statue that Charlie took. Considering the other biblical references he’s already made, it’s likely Mr. Eko isn’t going to take kindly to what he finds inside that statue.

LOST pages

I’ve written up some theories on the show LOST, and moved them to their own pages instead of making them posts.

I’m doing this for a couple of reasons. First, if you don’t want to see spoilers, then you won’t accidently view them by just going to the home page. Second, I’m writing it all up now so that later I can compare how very very far off I was.

You can access the pages on the right in the side bar, or go to the LOST theories page.