LOST Season 2

DESMOND: Listen carefully, type in exactly what I tell you -- exactly, nothing else. 4, 8, 15... Did you hear that?
LOCKE: What?
DESMOND: What did you just put in? What number did you just put in?
LOCKE: 15
DESMOND: Right, 16, 23, 42. Now press execute.
LOCKE [hesitating]: What's going to happen?
DESMOND: Just push it!
--LOST, Adrift

[Once again it is time to post. Being unable to craft my own thoughts into anything interesting, I will take the suggestion given me by Nate and post on the new season of Lost. If any of you crave any specific types of posts, give me comments below. Sometimes I need a spark to start the fire.]

Synopsis
The hatch is open. Walt has been kidnapped. The raft has been destroyed. Some things are beginning to make sense, while others are bringing more questions. There is a constant tension between faith and evidence. They are the survivors of flight 815. How and Why did they survive? I could expound on each character and the elements surrounding that character... but no... I'm here to throw out a few ideas concerning the newest revelations on ABC's Lost.

Orientation and Speculation
We are presented with an underground laboratory in the Dharma Project, known as location number 3, or the Swan. Obviously built in the 70's the place seems to be stocked for a lengthy existance, though was apparently designed for only two men. Inside we find one man, Desmond, a runner in a race around the globe, and an old film titled "Orientation."

Despite the aim of the film, it contains surprisingly little information. The Dharma Project is described as a scientific commune, where the researchers are able to push the bounds of known science through a variety of specialized experimentation. After this broad explination, the residents of "The Swan" are given instructions. These instructions consist entirely of entering a sequence of numbers into a computer, and pressing "Execute," every 108 minutes. The length of the task is supposed to be just over 500 days, when we assume an exchange of persons is made to relieve the previous residents.

So, it seems that a massive underground dome, stocked with food, locked from the outside world, on a remote island exists solely for the purpose of pressing that button every 108 minutes. The only explination for this activity is a vague mention of an "incident" during the Dharma Project. The obvious question is: Does the lab exists soley to prevent some catastrophy every 108 minutes, or does it exists soley to play with the minds of the inhabitants, as part of some greater experiment. The not-so-obvious question is: Why build all this on the island? There is also a vague mention of some strange elecrical phenomena on the island, accentuated with the bizaar magnetic field in the dome.

Personally, I think its a bigger experiment whose researchers have long since gone absent. I figure that para-scientific curiosity brough the Dharma Project to the island, after which all order was lost. The Swan experiment was designed to isolate the subjects, so they never really knew. I also figure that, the Swan, being site #3 (of 6 according to the film), that there are six laboratories on the island, possibly all of them different or similar in function, and also a single control lab to watch the six.

More Than One Way To Survive
On theother end of the spectrum, we have Sawyer, Jin, and Michael washing back on shore where they encounter a new community. It is my suspicion that this new community is not associated with "The Others" but rather are the other remenants of the plane crash. Of course, this group of survivors have formed a different kind of society than the first and have access to their own clues and secrets.

Given the details above, it would make sense that "the Others" have formed their own society, and are likely remenants of the old Dharma Project living in a lab somewhere.

Leftovers
As a note of interest, I do wonder a few things. Is the island by itself, or is it part of a small chain? The purpose of the "Numbers" is still bewildering: they've been broadcast, jinxed, used to label the hatch, used as a computer code, and they are printed on the chemical bottles Desmond was injecting into himself. I don't believe they were used as the computer code randomly, but chosen specifically. The numbers could identify a location or contain some kind of message. Why do the Others need a boy? So many questions.

I have rambled on well enough.