I think everyone may be getting as twitchy as Daniel with trying to figure out who's the good guy and bad guy in Lost. All of the antagonists have shown themselves to be ruthless on all sides. Let's just try to imagine that Jacob, Richard, Whitmore, Eloise, Ben, Christian, and now John new the outcome of the Incident. They knew who and how the 815ers who were left behind in 1974 were and who was going to come back to the present day. I believe that accounts for the number of 5 fatalities on the blast door map. This was a cover story to explain why the Dharma moles disappeared in 1977. The names of these persons are known to all of our characters listed above. But Ben tried to change all of that by convincing Eloise that if all or part of the O6ers came back to the island it would possibly save her son. Ben had planted Michael on the freighter to try to lure at least one of the 5 who would come back to the freight! er to be killed. He was convinced that he had succeeded when he believed that Jin had died in the freighter explosion. That's the reason he talked John out of killing himself. He saw no purpose in his death because he was not one of the 5 back in 1977 and no longer a threat to him. But, when John told him Jin was alive that meant that five people could still come through from the past. John became a threat to him alive again and dead bait for luring the O6ers back to the island for Eloise to send into the past. Neither Hurley, Sayid, Jack, or Kate were suppose to have been on the island in 1977. But, of these individuals, Hurley, Sayid, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Miles, Jin, Sawyer, Juliet, and Daniel, only 5 or 6 of them are still going to make it back to the present day. Sayid does not count on the blast door because he was not considered Dharma so he could come through without the knowledge of the Dharma people as a whole. Radzinsky would only concern his blast door musings wi! th his Dharma associates and not know about Sayid coming throu! gh. They can either chose to stay behind or get killed before the incident occurs, but only 5 or 6 of them will make it back to the present day. Daniel knew this and knew that he could stay behind secure in the comfort that there would still be 5 people known to the Dharma who crossed over into the present world. That's the way that it should have worked out. But Eloise provided a variable when she sent the O6ers to the island to change things. Regardless of names of the people coming through, will the numbers add up on both sides? There's only a certain number of seats on the Jubilee Train, and it's headed for the station.
