Jughead did not explode and its implications by Zhami

Jughead, we have been told, was an H (hydrogen) bomb. A "hydrogen" bomb is a fusion device that releases huge amounts of energies (many megatons of dynamite equivalent). An "atom" bomb, on the other (destructive) hand, is a fissile device that releases far less energy (measured in the kiloton ranges). A hydrogen bomb fuses hydrogen nuclei to release energy (converting mass to energy in accord with Einstein's famous formula, E = MC^2). An atomic bomb releases excess energy from a sustained chain reaction of the splitting of heavy isotopes of uranium (U 238). An "atomic" bomb can be made quite small, small enough to be carried by a person; such bombs have explosive energies of tens of kilotons. A "hydrogen" bomb requires an initial immense explosion powerful enough to cause hydrogen nuclei to fuse. In practice, "atom" (fissile) bombs are exploded in a larger container (itself made from uranium so it took explodes),! all designed to contain the explosive energy long enough to cause the hydrogen aspect of the bomb (the fusion) to, well, fuse.

What this means to Lost is that the core that was extracted from Jughead is NOT a hydrogen bomb. In fact, as best as I understand nuclear weapons of the 1950s, one could not so easily extract the atomic bombs within a hydrogen bomb.

Nowadays there are slender core handheld atomic bombs. I've no idea of they existed in the 1950s, but I doubt it. Back then, atomic bombs weighed tons.

But enough of science getting (too much) in the way of the show. At best (for the notion that the device that Jack dropped into the shaft) was nuclear bomb, it would be fissile (atomic), not fusion (hydrogen). In that case, it wold be a low kiloton bomb. Which would certainly be enough to destroy the Swan construction site.

By the way, even if a hydrogen bomb were exploded on the island, it wouldn't be powerful enough to actually destroy the island in its entirety, unless the island were rather flimsy.

But back to the Swan station... it wasn't destroyed by a bomb blast because the station is still there in "present" time looking (if I understand correctly) as it did after Desmond destroyed it. If this is correct, then Juliet did not detonate a bomb, all her smashing of the rock against it was futile.

The Swan station does get built and the countdown timer instantiated to, apparently, release the build-up of energy. Which means the Incident is not the explosion of Jughead's core, but the tapping of the energy beneath the station.

Which means that nothing was changed. Or rather, that perhaps because of the unexpected attack by Jack & Co. on the construction site, they may have caused the Incident. Whatever Happened, Happened. They're going back in time and intervening had always happened.

I propose that the flash of light we see at the end of S5 was another time jump of the sort we have seen. A question is: what was going on with the Donkey Wheel then?

I propose more so that the past can not be changed, even by traveling back to it (if that is even really what happened with the Losties, which I doubt).

My Grand Theory for the moment is that time can play out at different speeds, in different "alternate realities." That these alternate realities are not alternates to the actual one single timeline, but blips on that timeline. Kind of like looking at a grain of sand and seeing a world. All the experiences of the Losties of 815 is a blip that takes place during the turbulence in the air that we have no seen twice. I suspect we have not yet seen that event for the last time, and when we see it again, it will be different yet. Something is being played out on the Island, and how that resolves will determine "the fate" of 815, or rather, will "coalesce" the way 815 goes on to land at LAX.

What that means is that this new flashsideways that Darlton & Co. have given to us in S6 premier is NOT an alternate timeline, but a possibility for the one single timeline as the Universe coalesces the path it will take.

Every moment is such, and Lost is giving us a glimpse into the immeasurable way the Universe resolves itself in a flash in every point in time in every moment from an infinite sea of possibility.

When "The Battle" is waged over the creation of the very moment (what we call Now), eternity stands still for an infinitesimal moment as the infinite Variables coalesce to form the Constant that is.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
~~ William Blake
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Auguries_of_Innocence