Alternative Timelines are NOT as a result of the incident by Cassiopea

In my last theory “A Backwards reset” I said that the bomb was blown up. I just want to clarify what I think. It could be one of two options, either are satisfactory to me but either way I don’t think what happened at the incident is the cause of ALT. That’s my main point here. The possibility of a new time line is not a tangent that has skewed from this point in time. I think it is people who have turned the FDW who have made changes who have caused many alternative timeline and this is the war. A war over the timeline. People who believe in WHH – please give me a chance to show you how my theory shows that series 1-5 DOES have meaning and alternative timelines do not mean that everything we have seen in our Losties back stories is meaningless.

The two possibilities of how the incident played out in my mind are thus. 1) Dharma tested the bomb and then put another in the Swan as a failsafe device. I think Dharma knew that the type of radiation used in an H bomb can be used with EM and cause time travel or they suspected that it would and this was the test case. Maybe this was a massive test run to see if large quantities of radiation used with the EM on the island could create time travel. However there were experiments with EM to send a bunny through time so maybe the incident was the next part of their experiments. We have also seen Dan experimenting with radiation when he was experimenting on Eloise the rat. He uses an anti-radiation suit and emits a purple light on Eloise, sound familiar? The island was flooded with the same purple light. We know at the time of the incident something went wrong but we don’t know which part. They could have brought Jughead to the island. I think this involved time travel and th! at’s why the bomb was leaking radiation. The bomb has been sent through time so many times now it has started to degrade and leak radiation (how Faraday found it). You see the people back at Ann Arbour must have know about EM and radiation from an H bomb so that Faraday would know what to do when he got back to the island on the sub. That’s why I think it was part of Dharma’s plan all along but somewhere along the way it all got messed up. Faraday’s role could have been to replace another scientist who was supposed to be setting off them bomb, the missing scientist could have been “removed” from the time line by the other “team” in this war over time I’m proposing. OK so in a nut shell this possibility is that Dharma tested the bomb and then put another in the Swan as a failsafe device. They knew they could contain the EM (probably using the numbers and whatever that is all about) but if anything went wrong and the EM built up to such a level again they co! uld essentially blow up a bomb and things would be OK. To a po! int anyw ay…

2) The bomb was not detonated and all that happened was a release of EM that turned the island into a time travelling machine. The undetonated bomb was then covered in concrete like Faraday suggested to his Mum in the first place. The Swan was set up with the numbers and the rest you know.

Either way, the future and what our Losties experienced on the island stays the same and any alternative we might see would NOT be as a result of the incident. Ultimately WHH is only necessary to ensure that one can time travel to go into the past but other changes can be made. As long as the events which led them to go back in time are preserved then there isn’t a problem. I think it’s right to say that if Jack did manage to change anything by blowing up the bomb then in that future he doesn’t get to send himself back in time and a paradox occurs. WHH therefore is ONLY true to ensure that one can time travel in the future so enable oneself to go back in time. Changes can be made as long as you don’t jeopardise your ability to go back in time to make the changes you’ve made. How would you know what the consequances are? You’d need a map of time, I wonder have we seen something that could look like that?

The thing is that we are missing a huge gap of time where we don't know how the Dharma experiments progressed and considering all the references to theoretical quantum physics... I believe that Dharma have put into practice many of these theoretical quantum physics ideas time travel, quantum supposition, creating time loops, quantum suicide. Dharma has been manipulating time for so long and has made so many changes to the timeline.
I have been theorising that a paradox is what caused the end of the world because Dharma messed with time and caused the end of the world as predicted by the Valenzetti equation. Ironic how they caused what they were trying to prevent! As a result time has not ceased to exist totally but caused a different universe, a one which may have totally different laws of physics. Think of it as soon as they time travelled that was when they caused a problem and the end of the universe as we know it. Instead of total annihilation we have messed up time and space. I put that in just in case there’s and wannabe quantum physicists reading! Now all Dharma can do is mess with time to try right the problem if they can (I think we will discover that they cannot change the end of the world) or they may have discovered a different dimension to live in...I think this is how someone can be dead in one reality and yet their consciousness still lives and can appear to Hurley. Unless the smoke mo! nster has escaped from the island – but then following my logic that would mean the whole world would be replaying over and over too? Maybe all that Dharma can do now is mess with all the variables in the past they will soon find that they are accomplishing anything as ultimately it only ends once! The war is between people wanting to continue to try to make a change or maybe to reach a higher state of consciousness and those who want to admit defeat – those people feel that time travel caused the end of the world and just want to deal with it. They want the end to come, a bright white light and no more time travel and I think that’s would be a bittersweet end to the whole of Lost.

If Dharma have been studying time travel and achieved it, we’re not just talking about 30 years of study and experimenting but potentially so much longer than that. The information from the year 2000 odd could be taken back in time to Chang in the 70’s and worked on for another 30 years and so on and so forth. Who knows what they could have achieved, maybe even found a way to assume another person’s consciousness like some people are suspecting the MIB has done (as he appears to have assumed Locke’s identity). I still am not sure that Flocke is not JUST Locke who has future knowledge though. More I fear to that later… This idea of transferring the time travel info back in time has been seen when Faraday passes info back to his younger self via Des. Des gives Dan the correct setting for his machine to send Ellie the rat through the maze and then the next 10 odd years Dan worked on constants just in time to save Des from dying from an aneurysm. Of course the next tim! e he can tell Des to tell his younger self about constants and then Dan can work on Variables for the next 10 odd years. See my theory Quantum Immortality.

So once Dharma know EM has time travel properties they have had years to do all sorts of crazies. Exposing people to EM sends them back in time, sometimes physically sometimes just their consciousness. How and why this is achieved may be to do with whether there’s a bomb in the mix, I don’t know. I think Dharma sent people in the Swan back in time over and over again in a loop. The iterations within the Swan interfered with each other and appear as shadows so they invent Cerberus which is supposed to keep them apart but it malfunctions at some point hence the Smoke Monster is actually alternative universes interfering with each other. EM floods the island and creates a bubble round it making it out of time a time travelling machine so that the island can pop and it’s in 1954 and some army dudes come with a bomb, then pop, the island is in 1845 (or thereabouts) and a ship lands/crashes on it… Then we’ve got the Frozen Donkey Wheel (FDW) where EM floods the chamber a! nd sends the person one way through time and the island through to another point in time (it could just be moving the island through space, who really knows, eh?). At the same time the person exposed to EM would have their mind sent back into their past self, I think, or at least have flashes like Des. That would explain why JUST Locke (and not the MIB in disguise) on the beach seems so different – he has future knowledge like Des experienced after he turned the failsafe key. Or like Eloise the rat experienced. All these are suppositions on my part but I’ve written about them in more depth in my other theories. I’m kinda summarising to get my main points across in this theory. Basically I think that Dharma have been using this phenomenon of EM causing time travel manipulations in all manor or different ways.

The experiments get more complicated and involved and time gets all messed up but it could be possible to look at it from a position out of time. If you have a map that plots the course then you see what action results in what set of consequences. (Remember me harping on about Anorax and Star Trek Voyagers episode The Year of Hell in my other theories.) You can go back in time again and again and try to make a difference and then observe the results. Are these the strange maps in Faraday’s diary or the ones Caesar found perhaps?

Only people with that sort of map could make a change that would have serious consequences. I don’t believe in course correction. CC is people interfering and making changes or setting things on course like what Hawking does with Des in the ring shop or Dan making sure that Chang sends everyone off the island (i.e. baby Miles). I think WHH is essentially just 1) when Dan told our Losties to stop them trying to second guess their actions and make a change and 2) only important for time travel. Most things people would have done would just end up happening anyway, yes. Not through divine intervention or CC but through free will and human nature. An unchanged timeline would play out exactly the same and one change could have so many unforeseen consequences. EG Maybe there was always a Dr on the island who delivered baby Ethan but due to previous changes it was always necessary for another to step in – either Jack or Juliet depending on who could be persuaded to or not. I me! an maybe in some versions of the time line Ethan does end up dead. Anyway you’d need to have a map of the time line and be able to see the consequences of ones actions, a diary of what’s going to happen for example.

So I said earlier that Cerberus was a Dharma device which is supposed to keep different time lines apart in the Swan but now it is on the island I think it means that the island is now the next stage of the experiment. If the experiments progressed to send the island back in time, like I said about the EM release could have made the whole island like the FDW chamber or the time travel booth in the Orchid – a time machine. Then events on the island are being replayed over and over again, the island has been sent back in a time loop which lasts approx 30 years. Check out my theory Conceptually Optimistic if you like for more details. “FARADAY: The Island... [sighs] think of the Island like a record spinning on a turntable... only now, that record is skipping. Whatever Ben Linus did down at the Orchid station... I think... it may have... dislodged us.” That’s how the Losties time travelled IMO – they just went to a different part of the time loop on the island.

The island being in a time loop also gives an explanation for needing the correct bearing to come and go from the island and the windows of time to get to the island. For more specifics about the time discrepancies check out this theory - http://theoriesonlost.blogspot.com/2009/08/108-think-i-know-by-krivs.html. and my comments after if you’re interested. On the island those alternative timelines are not kept separate because Cerberus malfunctioned. Cerberus is monstrous because it can kill you, another time line which sweeps in to blink you out of existence (Eko) or when it tried to take Locke down a hole in the ground. Possible time lines off island influence people on the island, curing cancer allowing them to walk. Changes happen in a blink of an eye, or a flash of bright light and the sky turning purple, when really it is the other realities interfering with the one the Losties think they should be in. I refer again to when Marty in Back to the Future returns home aft! er changes were made in the past, his family were different to what he remembered. He’d changed the timeline yet he had not experienced that time line. He himself was not the same Marty anymore, at least according to his life’s history he has assumed the life of his counterpart. What if Marty had caused an accident in the past which his past self experienced and when he returned to his correct place in time he could find himself in a wheel chair with no recollection of why. You see how John can now walk?

I wrote a theory called the Spiral which I am referring to here again. I think each time someone turns the wheel and goes back in time they've made a change so there are so many alternatives a spiral moving along like a continuous spiral, like a slinky perhaps, where one time line replaces another and changes are being made each time someone goes back. One side takes a turn then another and another, counter move after counter move, an endless game.

I think the flashbacks may have been a combination of altered and unaltered pasts of our Losties. It's the Locke story that makes me think that. Locke thinks he should be in a wheelchair when he comes to the island but he can walk. That would mean that in the original time line he should have been paralysed but I cannot help but think that the whole thing with Mr Cooper (Locke's so-called-father) was set up to influence John and he ended up paralysed as an unexpected side effect. I’m thinking if we do see an alternative timeline which looks like it could be as a result of Jack and co blowing up the bomb then it will not be a tangent universe. It could just be the immediate previous timeline maybe not even the original timeline for I think there have been many. The incident with Locke was just someone from the future who had gone back in time to make changes to the timeline and the unexpected consequences of the changes resulted in John’s accident. Maybe in a past time li! ne John was so instrumental in the future that someone went back in time to make him less capable in future events. Maybe John interfered in the war and gave one side an unfair advantage…

The Losties back stories are there to show us how the time line has been manipulated and messed about with. So far we’ve only seen slight differences that have been written off as continuity errors but next series I think they will be more obvious. This is the result of the war and it makes series 1-5 important that all these changes affected them on the island. They are now better off on the island, not in prison, not having OD'd on drugs, not owning a Mr Clucks and seeing Dave etc etc because their pasts have been changed. At the end of the day one doesn't need to understand the science but it makes for a cool twist that ties everything together. All those apparent continuity errors that people are complaining about are down to the TWIST - ALT was there all along! I hope.
Sorry it's so long and so long for now ;-)