The explanation of the numbers
TV Guide reports that ABC's online game "The Lost Experience" revealed some of the island's secrets after the participants followed all the clues:
An unlocked video detailed how a mathematician was commissioned by the United Nations in 1962 to calculate the timetable for humanity's extinction. The resulting Valenzetti's Equation was based on factors represented by Egyptian hieroglyphics, each of which was assigned a numerical value: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, aka what would become Hurley's cursed digits. Though the Hanso Foundation created the Dharma Initiative to stave off the forecast apocalypse, the foundation’s impatient acting president Dr. Thomas Mittelwerk is itching to unleash a virus that will snuff 30 percent of the world's population.
You can view the video here...
ALL THE CLUES TOGETHER
An unlocked video detailed how a mathematician was commissioned by the United Nations in 1962 to calculate the timetable for humanity's extinction. The resulting Valenzetti's Equation was based on factors represented by Egyptian hieroglyphics, each of which was assigned a numerical value: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, aka what would become Hurley's cursed digits. Though the Hanso Foundation created the Dharma Initiative to stave off the forecast apocalypse, the foundation’s impatient acting president Dr. Thomas Mittelwerk is itching to unleash a virus that will snuff 30 percent of the world's population.
You can view the video here...
ALL THE CLUES TOGETHER
posted by Germain at 11:16 AM
6 Comments:
Apparently I'm the only one still confused as hell, so will someone compile these revelations into a bullet-point list or something? For "explaining" all the big LOST questions this is pretty anticlimactic...
1. The numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) are values in an equation that marks the end of the world and was commisioned by the UN. But they were so scared of it, they buried it. We don't know what they specifically relate too but we do know that by changing their values, we can save the world.
2. The Hanzo Foundation helped fund the Dharma Inititive (which stands for Department of Heuristics and Research on Material Applications) which sent scientists to a remote island where they would stay in hatches and try to change the values of these numbers by fucking with the environment. This explains pretty much everything on the island in a very broad sense. The smoke, the animals, etc.
3. Dharma failed and the Hanzo Foundation has now started to spread a disease as the next step in trying to change the values of these apocalyptic numbers. It's not clear if this has happened yet, is happening, or will happen but its fairly clear that the others have something to do with it.
Did I miss anything?
Thanks, but... that's still vague as hell and doesn't really do anything for me. "The numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) are values in an equation that marks the end of the world and was commisioned by the UN"... Okay, but what does that mean? Why those numbers? What exactly do they represent? How does "fucking with" the environment change the values of the numbers, and how does that explain the island? How does this virus change the numbers? This is all hodgepodge to me right now.
Methinks these aren't the final answers... if they were, wouldn't they be integrated into the show itself so all viewers would be on the same page?
The only thing I can glean is that Vinterberg (I think) mentioned the need to hit precise genetic targets-- which made me think of the Others' list: Jack, Kate, Sawyer. I'm just dying to find out what this list is all about: the producers have mentioned that it's no coincidence that the List names the principal stars of the show...
Ah Sam. I'd think that by now you'd accept the fact that we'll never get straightforward, "obvious" answers to the growing list of LOST mysteries...
But alas, G, I think you did a great job of summing up the video. Yes the numbers represent something. No we still don't know what they actually mean or equate to. Yes the Dharma Initiative is responsible for all the hatches and experimentation on the island. No they're no longer around.
But it was the little things in the video (things that easily lead to more questions) that got me excited, like:
-I'm willing to bet that Hanso is long gone, buried deep in the ground somewhere. I think the Hanso Foundation is run by people who want to use the information they have for their own benefit, namely in weapons manufacturing (makes sense that they'd want to spread a new disease and see how it effects the population).
-We saw some stock footage of the radio tower. When are we going to find this thing on the show?
-Was Rousseau part of the Dharma Initiative?
-Does the disease that Hanso Found. is apparently spreading around in African-sounding cities have anything to do with the constant mention of diseases and cures on the island?
-All this mystery surrounding the alteration of the numbers sequence, and the manipulation of how human's interact with diseases and cures, makes me wonder that maybe they're trying to permanently alter the human genetic code? Maybe that somehow explains the four-toed statue... are we dealing with a superior race of human beings here that we've yet to meet?
Anyway, that's a start. The LOST blog is BACK!
If these are just more half-answers (which could very well be flipped upside down later on, ala the Swan/Pearl/Swan switcheroo), that's more than fine with me, and yes I've accepted that fact... It's just that everyone was saying this video "explains everything," even Germain.
Another tidbit I picked up recently from a Lindeloff interview: To paraphrase: "Viewers were led to believe that the end of season two opened up the show by letting us know there's an outside world out there. But ask yourself, what exactly did I see?"
It's true that outside of a bunker in the snow and a dark bedroom, we didn't see shit of an outside world. ..
Re: Season 2's last scene, I believe the quote pulled from EW a coupla issues back was that we may have "gotten 60% of what we saw, but what about the other 40%?"
And yeah, they're totally half answers, but I'm surprised at how much they touched upon for something that most people -- even uber fans like us -- didn't even bother to follow. Does it "explain everything?" Yes, and no. It confirms a lot of what I, for one, was thinking, but in true LOST fashion, only leads to more questions. But content-wise, it said a helluva lot more in what, a few minutes, than what a lone episode of the show usually does...
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