Imminent Disaster Theory still holding water? by Locke4God

For about 2 years I've promoted a theory which holds that LOST is all about preventing a future disaster from taking place, and halfway through the final season, the details are still falling into place nicely.

Let's start with the ALT. We don't know what it is right? We don't know what, if anything, it has to do with the main story we've followed. But there seems to be a concensus surrounding the idea that the world of the ALT is a world without Jacob.

What the Imminent Disaster Theory states is that Jacob, or perhaps the Island itself foresaw a disaster in the future. I present to you the sunken island. I will speculate that the island has some ability to hold reality, or time, or some other major concept, in check. It's simply vital to life as we know it. So when it sank, it led to a breakdown of reality, or some other disasterous consequence. And so Jacob decided to begin to manipuate events in order to prevent this.

In short this means that the ALT will reveal to us WHY Jacob felt the need to do this by showing us what the consequences of an islandless/Jacobless world would be, and there need be no interaction between the timelines to accomplish this.


So How Does this Work?

Well from the moment Jacob learned about this outcome, he began manipulating people to do something about it. He brought a number of groups to the Island; The Others, Dharma, the US Military, the Black Rock, Rousseau, and at last 815. Some of these we haven't yet understood their full purpose, but others we know to have been involved with the manipulation of time.


Why does Jacob need to Manipulate time?

He needs to create a new reality. He needs to get people off of their current course, and onto a new one that will bypass the imminent dissaster.

If I set up a series of events in 2010, that will lead a person in the year 3000 to decide to travel to the past, then I can begin manipulating events from whatever time they landed in. And this honors the concept of WHH as well. If he manipulates events that will lead to a person traveling to the past, then that person can already show up in the past, because the path is already laid out.

It works in the exact same way you might plan a suprise party. You gather all the materials. You manipulate a person to a specific location, and you already know that they will be suprised once they get there. In the exact same way in the show, the events are already laid out, and therefore the person has already traveled to the past even though they do it from the future. Hence the losties were always in the 70's and always contributed to events like The Incident.


What does this have to do with the MIB?

The MIB is concerned with himself. I'm not sure of the exact method, but his attempts to "go home" or leave the island, or whatever he is attemping to do is what led to the imminent dissaster, or the sinking of the island and the ultimate ruination that brings. What Jacob is doing, is allowing the MIB to further his goals while baiting him into a trap.

Backgammon actually comes into play here, and other games as well. Sometimes in a game, it's preferable to sacarafice your own pieces in an attempt to lure your opponent into an ultimately prone possition that he can't escape from. It's a con. You give your opponent a false since of hope, and then you slam the trap shut on them at the right moment.

The trap for Jacob turned out to be Locke. He knew from his experience and visions of the imminent dissaster which occurs in the ALT, that MIB would choose to manipulate different people. Thus Jacob began manipulating Locke, along with many others, to the island as bait. Gradually he enticed Locke into blindly following the island which in turn made MIB vulnerable as he thought that he'd found the perfect sucker to con. However Jacob wants MIB to think that Locke was the perfect man to con. Locke is the trap.

Where it gets interesting is that from that point on, MIB & Jacob both wanted the same thing. They both wanted Locke to leave, so he could die, and return as a vessel for MIB. Once that was done, MIB figured that he'd won the perfect method of conning his way off the island, or back home, or whatever, while Jacob knew that he'd conned MIB into taking the bait.

MIB is trapped as we know, and that, along with some other factors will be his mistake. He won't be able to accomplish the mission of escaping the island, which had intially led to it sinking, and to the ALT reality (which in actually was the original reality)

There is some more that goes into it, but I'll leave it at this. Please see some of my recent theories on Jack & Christian's roll for that.

I will say that I do believe that Jacob does actually want a replacement, but that need was also merely a part of the con against MIB from the start. In short, MIB knew that Jacob was looking for a replacement, yet he didn't understand that Jacob's death would be desired by Jacob himself. The Candidates were mostly choices to lure MIB into picking one of them, whereby Jacob would use that choice against him. It turned out to be Locke. In truth Jacob is using his own death as part of the con to lure MIB into a false since of security, and to the greater good of the island.

That's where Jack comes in, because Jacob does need a replacement now that he's dead, and Jack will be the man to fill that roll, thus keeping the MIB in check going into the future. He was brought to the island because he's a good person, and as a man of science would be useless to the MIB. In time Jacob knew he would be able to convince Jack, and his ultimate roll will be to make a choice. Jacob, while manipulative, still can't force people to do anything. Jack is going to be presented with a choice that only he can make, and it's going to be given to him by Christian. The choice will be to reject or accept the island.

So by this scenerio the imminent disaster is avoided, the Island is fitted with a new keeper, and life both on the island and in the real world continues.