The Incident (event)/Theories

From Lostpedia

When

1977 - Kate, Jack, Hurley and Sayid start a chain of events that lead to the Incident.

• Only logical possibility as of "Some Like It Hoth".

1985 - The map on the Blast Door says "Caduceus station believed to have been abandoned due to AH/MDG incident of 1985 or possible catastrophic malfunction of Cerberus system."

• However, the Swan video was copyrighted 1980. "AH/MDG incident" could be a different event entirely.
  • Right, perhaps the main cast, after the 1977 Incident in the Season 5 Finale, will be sent to 1985, where they will encounter the second incident (because, what else are they gonna to with a whole sixth season if after the 1977 Incident, there are no other Incidents to run into?)

Causes

Physical Event

• The incident is the detonation of Jughead, causing the crater on the south end of the island seen in Rousseau's maps.
• The incident was caused by DHARMA workmen who damaged the concrete pouring of the Jughead bomb that the Hostiles have buried below the Swan before this was built.
  • The Jughead was buried underneath the Barracks
• The Incident was a volcanic eruption either on the island or a nearby island. The Black rocks Behind The Door seem to be igneous rocks (rocks that originated from a volcano). The volcanic rocks may have caved in on the station. Also, the eruption may have created/strengthened/moved an electromagnetic field, causing pushing the button necessary.
• The 20 meters of solid rock wall surrounding the FDW (the wall that Pierre Chang told DHARMA workers not to mess with in the Seas. 5 premier) will be blown apart by somebody (probably either Bram's people or Faraday) hoping to gain access to the FDW, releasing an catastrophic electro-magnetic charge.

Political Event

• "The isolation that attends the duties associated with Station 3 may tempt you to try and utilize the computer for communication with the outside world, this is strictly forbidden. Attempting to use the computer in this manner will compromise the integrity of the project and... worse could lead to another incident. I repeat, do not use the computer for anything other than the entering of the code." - Dr Pierre Chang.
  • The moment I heard that, I immediately thought of the pinhole mentioned earlier in this theory. Is it possible that the incident was due to Pierre Chang and possibly Daniel Faraday using the exotic matter on the island to communicate from the year 1978 to 2008? I believe so. In using this energy, it lead to Pierre Chang losing his arm and in the process killing Daniel Faraday, then of course, the thick concrete wall was built around the energy and the new protocol was asserted.
    • This sounds very likely. Perhaps a third party is present, Jacob: who is blasted into a space-time limbo whereby he exists in all island-time simultaneously and therefore can never again physically step foot into one time only.

The Result of Time Travel

There is now significant evidence backing that The Incident could very well be an issue to do with time travel, like what Desmond had suffered in "The Constant" while leaving on the helicopter. This could have been caused by The Swanstation going out of control. Perhaps DHARMA members were affected in a similar way to Desmond. The Swan station was used working in tandem with The Orchid to control electromagnetism used in the time travel experiments and they introduced the protocol to enter numbers to keep the levels of magnetism from going out of control.

Miles

• The meeting of Miles(the adult) and Miles(the child) cause the Incident.
  • Lawrence Miles is the author of the original Doctor Who novels. According to the fictional Doctor Who, when a time traveler meets his or her self, there are certain limitations and effects -- the Blinovitch Limitation Effect. It is usually understood as having two aspects: firstly, that a time traveler cannot "redo" an act that they have previously committed, and secondly, that a dangerous energy discharge will result if two temporal versions of the same person come into contact.
• Dr. Pierre Chang (Marvin Candle et al.), while at the Swan with the child Miles, encounters time traveling Miles. The adult Miles touches Dr. Chang on the arm, and reaches for the baby with the other. The temporal Miles' come in contact causing a "flash." Our time travelers flash to 2008, as the closed timeline curve collapses.
  • Dr. Chang, having severely injured his arm, is still able to direct Radzinsky to use the Swan's instruments to contain the energy discharge leaking from the incident room. A protocol is quickly established to slowly release the energy.

Other Travelers

• The time travel machine/device in The Orchid station sent the whole island back in time, thus creating a time loop. This was The Incident. Once the island reaches the date of the incident again, the island will be sent back in time. Again Adam and Eve are the skeleton of two of the Losties. The whispers are the voices of people who have lived on the island during the time loop, things they have said at that exact time like in the movie The Others.
  • Or rather the incident could have been caused by the survivors using the Orchid to return to the "present" from the "DHARMA past" that they appear to be trapped in since Locke put the wheel back on it's axis.
• We know that Sawyer, Juliet, Jin, Daniel and Miles were stuck in 1974 when they came across Amy, then of course Sawyer fabricated a story about how they got to the island which in this case, Horace believed. I want you to remember that the year they're in is 1974. Three years later, in 1977, we find out that they are members of the DHARMA Initiative. Sawyer gets a phone call from Jin telling him that he found Jack, Kate and Hurley. This is all you need to know, that Jack, Kate and Hurley came back in 1977.
• The Incident will be caused by the Losties that are trapped in 1977. This is how they will get back to the present time.
  • This would be highly ironic since they all crashed on the island in the first place due to the 108 minute button protocol not being followed in the Swan station, a protocol put in place as a response to the Incident. If they caused the Incident that caused their crash, their future selves directly caused their own crash.
    • Making Locke correct - they were brought there for a "reason." Locke implies its spiritual though, in that he is somewhat incorrect.

Effects

• The Incident may have been the origin of The Sickness or even The Monster
  • The incident could very well have attracted the monster, due to a high level of electromagnetism, into the swan station and done damage to the reactor etc, killing DHARMA workers in the process, we know that Ben was able to control it, so perhaps they discovered how to manipulate it.
• On the Blast Door Map, there are several stations that seem to be abandoned. The Staff, The Hydra, The Swan and The Pearl are the only stations we have seen functioning. However, in the episode "The Cost of Living" the Losties, using video displays found in The Pearl, are able to view the internal workings of a station that may not have been identified by name yet.
• Pierre Chang lost his hand in "The Incident," which has something to do with the electromagnetic anomaly in The Swan Station.
• The Incident caused the Island to unintentionally become unstuck in space-time, similar to what happens intentionally when the Frozen wheel is knocked off center. Assuming that the root cause of time travel is electromagnetic radiation, both the Frozen Wheel and the computer in The Swan act as valves to control the release of this radiation. Prior to the Incident, the Island was stable and the inhabitants of the Swan only had to enter the numbers when they wanted to move the Island in space-time (the numbers being coefficients related to the equations in The Lamp Post that can be used to derive the location of the island). Post-incident, the numbers need to be re-entered every so often to keep the island in the same place. Failure to enter the numbers causes the island to move to an indeterminate place in the space-time; one that would almost certainly be hard to return from.
• The Incident will cause the Losties to jump forward in time back to the present where they originally were. Since they are stuck in time in the 1970s and cannot change anything because "what happened, happened" according to Daniel Faraday, they are not in a tangent universe but actually in the time of the DHARMA Initiative. It would also be an exciting conclusion to the season and set the stage for the final chapter and most importantly put an end to the confusing time jumps in the story.

Infertility

• Once the Incident began an infinite time loop "started" in which 30 odd years went by and a population (the left-behinds) was sent through time before settling in 1973. The infertility results because any children/people added to the population in the loop would cause an increase of X children/loop (sort of analogous to the Richard/Locke compass that has no specific origin in the loop). This would in turn increase infinitely (through any probability of conception over absolute zero at an infinite rate) so that the population would reach infinitely instantly and destroy the loop. Therefore no people can be added to the loop who are not subsequently removed from the loop.
  • Examples of adhering to this rule or added/subtracted from time loop:
    • Alex is born to Danielle (added) but killed (removed)
    • Aaron (conceived within player-Claire before she enters loop); he is born but leaves the island and does not return to the loop
    • Ji Yeon - removed from playing field.
    • Ethan (conceived before arrival of Sawyer & co.) Babies already conceived before the loop may remain within the loop "player" (mother) and may become players themselves.
  • An issue with this theory may be the fact that the Others don't seem to travel through the loop with non-natives (evidenced by their disappearance in front of Locke); still it seems that this theory may be partially right, with the time loop/"paradox" prohibiting the arrival of new players in the loop that were not always there.

The Incident creates Jacob

• The effect of detonating Jughead in combination with the The Incident will singularly affect Jack more than anyone; causing him to become Jacob. Since he invariably will want to be the one to "fix things" he will in fact be at the center of the upcoming anomaly that we will witness. Jack will be thrown out of time or corporeal existence like Desmond was when he turned the failsafe key. His inability to maintain a physical form is a consequence of the detonation/Incident.
• Jack/Jacob's mysterious nature and presence contribute to his ability to run things from behind the scenes, all with the motivation of either ensuring the timeline flows properly, or that he will be able to undo his mistakes.
  • Jack/Jacob finally asks Locke to "help him," by which he likely means "set me free." Locke's decision to kill Jacob (or have him killed) will allow Jack to finally be liberated.
    • Jacob's death will allow the timeline to either be restored or to remain stable from that point on.

Whatever Happened, Happened

The efforts of Jack and Sayid to stop the accident at the Swan actually allows the Swan to be built. When the DI crew unleashes the energy, the explosion of the bomb reseals it. This allows the leak to be contained, and as a result it is covered in concrete, and the button protocol has time to be established. Ironically, the efforts of Jack to stop the events that caused the 815 crash actually ensure that they do happen.

Real World Evidence

• Possible real-world results stemming from a 1985 "incident" include 5 major plane crashes (6/23, 8/2, 8/12, 9/6, 12/12) and 4 major natural disasters (5/25, 5/31, 9/19, 11/13). Most notable is the 9/19 Mexico earthquake that killed 9,000 people.
• The Vela Incident of September 22, 1979 (25 years to the day prior to the crash of Oceanic flight 815) was the incident discussed in the orientation video by Marvin Candle.
  • This could possibly make sense as there is a book titled "The Last War", which is about Israel testing a neutron bomb on an uncharted island in the South Atlantic. Hence, references to both a war and the island.
• The Incident caused the Wow! signal of August 15, 1977.

The Pan-Temporal Exponential Nuke Feedback Loop Theory

• The Nuclear Explosion, The Wheel's Power, The Time Flashes, and the Magnetic Anomaly are all part of the same Pan-Temporal Phenomenon, resulting from the The Incident.
• The nuclear detonation at the Swan Site in 1977 becomes trapped in its own seperate bubble of space/time which is somehow tethered to our universe and forms the island's source of time bending energy. In essence, the actions of Jack & friends create the totality of the island's power (both in the ancient past and in the future) which is detectable at any point in time as a series of electromagnetic anomalies, and which always manifests itself as a white flash (whenever a time shift occurs, whenever the button isn't pressed, when the nuke goes off) when accessed. The energy in this trapped perpetual nuke loop, or what have you, when summoned or chanced upon, always resembles a nuclear detonation (the white flashes, the white screen at the end of "The Incident").
• If one presumes that "What Ever Happened, Happened" and if the energies released during The Incident cause the island's electromagnetic anomalies to be present during all of the island's history, then the detonation of the nuclear warhead adds to the power of its own blast exponentially via some kind of compound feedback loop, thus breaking the law of the conservation of energy and creating enough power to destroy the world, universe, etc.
• The Swan site needs to be discharged every 108 minutes or the nuke-loop will entirely re-enter our universe, releasing all of its energy at one point in time.
• The Incident is the H bomb. But not only the H Bomb. When Jack Through the bomb down the Electromagnetic pocket. It didnt go off. So When Juliet found her self alive at the bottom. There already has been a significant amount of time. Enough time for the Electromagnetic pocket to "do something" When Juliet detonated the bomb, the electromagnetic pocket created a shield of energy causing the bomb to explode, but be contained. The force the bomb created is still there. But was not set loose. Thats why you have to push the button. To keep the Electromagnetic pocket from releasing the Atomic Explosion.