The entire plot of the show is a continuation of the age-old struggle of man to comprehend and control nature. At its very heart are the apparently random meetings between people that surely everyone has experienced, but simply dismissed as coincidence. These random meetings form the web that allows one person to connect to another with six degrees of separation or less, a concept that applies to the real world as well.

Many of the characters, including Locke, Desmond, and Rousseau, are named after well-known philosophers who pondered the laws governing man’s existence. As well, the DHARMA Project bears the name of a religious base for seeking a higher truth. Many of the novels that appear in the show also deal with man either falling victim to nature or controlling his environment. This could allude to genetic and psychological experiments conducted by DHARMA in order to find man’s purpose and to create a human that could best fulfill that purpose.

The hatch had blast doors that closed at one point in the episode Lockdown, crushing Locke’s leg. In that same episode, a crate of supplies was dropped on the island. The hatch could have in fact been the control station for a cloaking or force field shielding device for the island. Either of these devices could have been powered by the same geologic anomaly that speeds healing on the island, and would need to be deactivated for the routine supply drops. The device could have been designed to require constant human attention to prevent the technology from being stolen. The blast doors might have been to protect the inhabitants of the hatch if an invading force were waiting to take the island during one of the supply drops. This would also explain why only combat model weapons were present in the hatch, when there would be no immediate danger to the occupants in an ordinary situation.

The blast door offers further evidence of this theory; it holds the writings of at least two previous inhabitants of the Pearl Station. These writings reference gene therapy and a so-called Cerberus system. Cerberus was the great three-headed dog that guarded Hades in Greek and Roman mythology and could be the name of the cloaking or shielding device on the island. There is also reference to a Caduceus Station; a caduceus is a winged staff wrapped with two spiraling snakes. It is used to represent the ability to harm or heal, and also as a symbol of the DNA double helix. To see the blast door’s image in it’s entirety, please see http://www.lost4815162342.com/blastmap.htm.

Evidence of genetic experimentation is most visible in the polar bears, which would not be able to survive in such a tropical environment. They have either been genetically altered or are in fact an albino variety of another type of bear, such as a grizzly. There is also the possibility of working with or on sharks; a possibility supported by the existence of the Hydra Station in which Jack is being held and the shark branded with the DHARMA logo that attacked Jin, Sawyer, and Michael after the Others destroyed their raft. Benjamin Linus claims to have lived on the island all of his life, which when considered with Juliet's outward dislike of DHARMA when she talks to Jack, suggests a long-running series of experiments, perhaps genetic as well as psychological. The Others’ need to steal children from unfortunate castaways on the island is perhaps a result of sterility caused by genetic modification. Alvar Hanso’s letter at www.thehansofoundation.org, in which both “Life-extension” and “Genomic Advancement” projects are listed, further supports this theory.