Lost Numbers
Warning: Lost geekery.
Wondering what those mysterious reoccurring numbers in Lost mean? Here’s the word from Damon Lindelof, co-creator of the series:
Here’s the story with numbers. The Hanso Foundation that started the Dharma Initiative hired this guy Valenzetti to basically work on this equation to determine what was the probability of the world ending in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Valenzetti basically deduced that it was 100 percent within the next 27 years, so the Hanso Foundation started the Dharma Initiative in an effort to try to change the variables in the equation so that mankind wouldn’t wipe it itself out.
The numbers are the variables in that equation. Seeing them everywhere just reinforces that these seem to be hard-wired into our society.
This is not the first time this information has been released. It came out in bits and pieces throughout promo clips and games outside of the show throughout the years. This is just the first time it’s all been said together.
That helps re-contextualize this video, shown at Comic-Con 2008:
They later declared that that video is not canon, so we can’t use it as evidence that Daniel will come back to run the camera. (Word on the street is that Daniel was supposed to stay on the island and try to change the future, but there was some complication with the actor, which is why they shipped him off and killed him off quite suddenly.)
But it’s quite obvious that someone did pick up Dharma’s work in the meantime. The Cuban missle crisis ended in 1962. The Dharma Initiative was founded in the late 60s or early 70s. Even if Dharma was founded in 1974, when Sawyer and company “landed” there, that would put the destruction of the earth in 2001 at the latest. So either the numbers were off, or the variables really were changed. Let’s not even talk about time loop theories at this point.