A Thought About the Bomb (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ALT) by Admiral Halsey

It is correct to assume that the Swan station was there to release built-up energy every 108 minutes.

Desmond turns the failsafe key and is exposed to THIS energy and not the normal energy of the Island.

Desmond's CONSCIOUSNESS travels through time after being exposed to this mixture of energy.

We have seen people on the Island and the Island itself move PHYSICALLY through space and time, presumably through the either manual or automatic utilization of the Island's natural exotic energy.

Then, it is safe to assume that the energy Desmond was exposed to and the energy Jack and company were exposed to after the 'Incident' were two different energies, as they had two different effects.

Therefore, it is safe to assume that the bomb did not go off when Juliet hit it with the rock, because the energy from the hydrogen bomb and the pocket of natural exotic matter would have done the same thing to Jack and co. that it did on Desmond in 2004.

So, if we are working under the assumption that the Sideways timeline is happening at the same time as the Primary timeline and is not the 'epilogue' to the show, we can also assume that it was the pocket of energy underneath the Swan site that caused the flash that sent Jack and co. to 2008 and caused Richard to think they died after seeing a huge flash of light coupled with the knowledge that their intent was to set off a hydrogen bomb.

Now it is my opinion that the same energy that was released at the Swan site in 1977 not only created the birthing difficulties on the Island (*), but also created the Sideways timeline through some sort of rip in space-time, or something to that effect.

So, working under this assumption, if when the pocket of energy underneath the Swan site was mixed with the energy of the hydrogen bomb in 1977 created a parallel universe, what will the same energy do in 2004 when Desmond turns the failsafe key? (Besides create a way for Widmore to find the Island) I wonder if anything special will happen when we catch up to the day that Desmond turned the failsafe key (around day 65 or something like that) in the Sideways timeline?

Now, the reason I support the idea that the Sideways will play into the Primary timeline (rather than the opposite) is that I don’t think the writer’s would make such an obvious point of setting up slightly different histories for each character if the Sideways timeline is some sort of reset caused by Jack’s actions at the end of the season. But who knows, really.

Also, I like (and semi-support) the idea that killing someone in the Primary timeline enables them to become aware of the Sideways timeline. Maybe dying in one universe enables you to see the bigger picture in the other one and therefore manipulate events (such as Charlie, Ana Lucia, Mr. Eko, and Libby visiting Hurley).
It would make Dogen’s death way more dignified, in that he now gets to be with his son. It also has the potential to make the Man in Black a totally different animal, if he is killing people to liberate them from Jacob’s manipulated world and into his world of free-will. Maybe the Sideways timeline is the ‘home’ he’s talking about?

(*) This being the cause for the birthing difficulties would answer the Annie question in my mind: Annie was simply Ben’s wife-to-be who died during childbirth and caused him to become obsessed with trying to find a cure for it. This would also explain why Ben chose to raise Alex as his own. This would also make Ben an even more well-written character in my mind, and if the writer’s choose to leave that mystery open so I can insert my own thoughts into it, I welcome that.

I know that a lot of this has probably been said previously, so thanks for reading.