Island of Desperation

I find it interesting that the island seems to embrace the characters most desperate and hopeless in the outside world. Ben, for example, was a scrawny kid who lost his mother, was dealing with an alcoholic father and didn't seem to have many friends. He turned to the Others outside of the world where he didn't belong for acceptance. John Locke was betrayed by his father, abandoned by the woman he loved and left in a wheelchair. He seems to have put all of his faith into the island and it's powers because he had nowhere else to turn.The island rewarded him with the gift of walking and even, recently, reincarnation.Even Desmond, who turned to the fail safe key when he felt he had nothing left to live for seems to have been reborn, waking up in the jungle with newfound psychic abilities.

I'm not sure what this means, but the island certainly seems to favor those who have nothing else to live for.

Am I missing examples?

Are the survivors being rewarded for their faith, or taken advantage of for their lack of self-reliance?

DHARMA Goal

why they got chosen out of all the other people in the world
why a plane crash..... government testings for scientific reasons......

The "Just What It Says" Theory - As stated in the Pearl orientation film, everything on the island is a different experiment currently being carried out by the Hanso Foundation. The Hansos found a unique island with many strange and exploitable properties, and are using it in their studies on zoology, social utopia, meteorology, etc.

Gaia Theory - The Earth and The Island are like a living organism, controlling the fates and lives of the Lost.

Medical Project Gone Awry - What if all the stations got infected with a disease that made "the others" stay on the island?

Belly of the Beast - Are they all in the belly of the Monster?

The Valenzetti Equation - Could a series of numbers be counting down to the end of time?

New Age Cult - Are The Others the remnants of a scientific cult or commune?

No Theory - What if there is no reasoning behind the events?

Vaccine Theory - The island is actually an experiment based around the vaccine, with other events used as excuses to invite and keep ts.

Evolution - Is everything that is happening on the island, and everything relating to the Hanso Foundation, designed to achieve one ultimate purpose: to trigger the next evolutionary phase of mankind into higher beings?

Mental Patients - The Losties are fellow patients in a mental institution.

The New Gods - The island is a psychic generator, able to alter reality at the slightest whim of its inhabitants. A strong, disciplined mind could make the island a paradise in his image; a madman could make it a living Hell. Aware of the island's power, the Others have chosen(?) a life of strict discipline to create a safe, predictable, boring life, where non-conformity is the greatest sin; the vaccine somehow inhibits their ability to influence the island. Along come the Survivors - drug addicts, madmen/women, a cripple with delusions of grandeur, a child with a chaotic but powerful imagination, and a slew of murders and thugs. Their undisciplined minds threaten the safety of everyone on the island, possibly even the planet. Those that are worthy of 'godhood' must be culled and properly trained, while the rest are dealt with...permanently.

The Village Theory - This is similar to the concept shown in the movie "The Village". The Others are living on this island and trying to avoid contact with the external world. They were earlier associated with the Hanso Foundation which was to do research on various science and social sciences, and an "incident" happenned -- I think the incident involves around them finding an actual magnetic anamaloy they found. The project was scrapped, and an actual station developed to counter the magnetic anamoly, which was where they pressed the button every 108 minutes. They wanted to keep this thing secret from everybody in the rest of the world, so that the initiative to counter the anamoly does not fall under political pressures or conflicts (one such is Desmond's girlfriend, whose father might turn out to be the Big Villain of this all). The four-toed statue was part of some other failed hanso project. So were the animals under study in the cages. Because of the anamoly, planes never happen to reach here, and water currents swirl around, so its difficult to go away. At present, the only a few among the Others are aware of the magnetic anamoly that they need to guard, and they are pretending to the rest of their gang that everybody else that comes from outside the island is infected with a disease. And thus they plan to live there forming a society for ages.

Failed Government Research Facility- Consider the following information. There are 2 Islands, there are Multiple Hatches, there is at least one observational point that monitors hatches, there are tanks for the containment of animals that do not belong in the regions, and there are some other points. Consider this theory. In the late 70's, a government discovers the magnetic fields in a particular region. Governments being curious during such a time period setup a reaserach facility to monitor and experiment with these anomolies. Something goes wrong, people start to die, or are becoming neglected and know it. The government, protecting its identity, discontinues the experiment and removes the ability to reach the outside world. This explains a few things. The lack of a larger group of people, the pressence of a military individual, the reason for housing (the others lived there) , the purpose of Docks. The government, secretly still drops supplies to the people in hopes that they dont tottaly abandon them. There is a second Island, it is not in use by anyone. I know this because the Polar bears escaped from the cages that sawyer was in, they did not transport Sawyer on a boat or plane, the Polar bears are on the same island the cages are, so are the losties. The second island is just another island. If it was the late 70s or early 80s, Ben/Henry would have been perfect to head up the location.

Non-failed scientific experiment - The Others are actually the descendants of the original experimenters. (Ben said he'd lived on the Island "all his life.") The Dharma training video got edited when it was referring to electromagnetism and what could possibly have been "utopian societies." The original experimenters could be off the island somewhere (possibly on the island Ben showed Sawyer. Possibly the same place he refers to as "home") monitoring their offspring, and the Others could be acting in the only way they were shown...by experimenting on everything and everyone.

Galapogos meets Gilligan's Island - It is a strange island with strange inhabitants and John Locke plays out the role of Gilligan, sabotaging every effort to get off the island.


The Lost in Time theory - The special properites of the island include some kind of time flux or ability to produce a wormhole allowing for long distance teleportation. As seen in the finale, the island vanished from existance and was "moved" when Ben turned that mechanism. Who built that control? How did Ben know about how to move the island? Why does Widmore know so much about the island but can't seem to get there? I believe Widmore was on the island at some point in the past and I believe he moved the island during his stay there and was booted just like Ben was when he moved it. Now Widmore wants back, but can't seem to locate the island, and as Ben stated, once you move the island, you can not go back...
Update... 6/5/08
Thinking about the season finale, it seems to me that we were shown the same thing twice in the episode, but the first time was more of a science experiment that explained what we would later see on a much larger scale. The bomb on the boat, was held in check by Michael freezing the battery with the canister of freon or whatever it was. Once the bomb was activated, the explosion was delayed until the battery thawed out and then the bomb became what it was intended, wiped out the boat... and Michael and Jin died as a result (we think). Jump ahead to the later part of the episode when Ben is about to move the island. He puts on a winter jacket (one we saw in a previous episode Flash forward, when Ben woke suddenly in the middle of the Sahara desert) and proceedes to climb down into a FROZEN chamber. He breaks away the ice and pushes the lever to apparently open a chamber that fills the room Ben is in with thermal heat and then poom! the Island vanishes. Im going to revise my earlier statement to say that I think the island moves, but not through geographic means, but chronologicly, meaning that the Island moves backwards and fowards though time. Keep in mind the Dharma video that Locke was watching, it included a demonstration of the rabbit being moved through a short period in time. I would guess that the chamber draws off controlled amounts of whatever energies are in that chamber behind the experimental chamber. Ben wrecks the "time" chamber by filling it with metal (which he does even as Locke is watching the Dharma guy say not to put any metal in the chamber) and blowing a hole in the back of it to get into the frozen area. This would go a long way to explain many things like the various animals on the island, the ghosts Like Christian and even the smoke monster thing (which I have a different theory for). Most importantly is the Black rock. It's located 2 miles inland, so how did it get there? I think it may have been shipwrecked by the island popping up during either a random jump prior to the Dharma Initiative's arrival on the island, or during an experiment being conducted by the Dharma people. The others, may be the decendants of the original crew of the Black Rock or....They may be the original crew. I believe when the island made its time jump, Ben was shunted away by the forces that removed the island and ended up in the Sahara. Once he got there and gathered himself (and killed those guys...Ben is a tough s.o.b.) He made his way to that hotel, confirmed what year he was in with the concierge and then proceeded to find Sayid...

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