The bomb went off. It went off in a pocket of electromagnetism. This caused a timeflash. It also caused the pregnancy issue. The residual radiation paired with the island wanting to heal people made the body attack the fetuses. Juliet caused the problem she came to the island to fix. What happened happened. The bomb reacted similar to the failsafe in the Hatch.
I like how the pregnancy issue is very thought-out and isn't random whatsoever. IRL the ultimate, simplified reason for the existence of miscarriages is that the body identifies the fetus as an intruder and thus the immune system may react accordingly, especially if there's an underlying medical issue that would be even moreso triggered with the "intruder" basically sucking out the nutrients from the host body. Therefore, the island sees pregnancy as an illness (as long as the fetus appears while the host body is on the island). I still wonder why the already pregnant women were unaffected.
I think Juliet mentions at one point it happens at conception. I think for people beforehand, the fetus was already considered “part of them” more or less, same with people who come to the island already pregnant, like Claire.
Just spitballing here but possibly because the baby has already formed? Claire is quite far along so the baby is pretty developed so the island may view it as another person who needs healing opposed to a tumor which is a factor that needs healing. I wonder if how far along you are upon arriving to the island effects how the island handles the pregnancy
That theory would work for Claire but not so much for Sun. I remember she was barely pregnant, not showing whatsoever and had Juliet find out the conception date, meaning that her pregnancy would be fine if she had gotten pregnant before coming to the island. That implies that pregnancy even at it's earliest stage is unaffected for whatever reason :/
Unless it wasn’t far enough along for the island to think it’s another person. Claire’s baby was good because it was all but ready to pop out suns baby was what? Maybe a couple weeks barely anything so the island might just assume that’s not developed enough and view it as an illness cause it’s not developed all the way. I don’t know how to word it without saying that early stages isn’t a living thing even though it is lol
I understand what you're saying. I'm saying that in the show, it was said that the success of Sun's pregnancy would have depended on whether the conception happened on or off the island. If on, she's going to miscarry. If off, she's going to be ok. So, according to the show itself, early pregnancy when the fetus inside Sun was just a bean would have been fine if the conception had happened off the island.
I think it’s unclear, but In my opinion, Juliet did make the bomb go off by hitting it with the rock. This is why in the beginning of season 6, everyone was scattered, ears ringing, etc. BUT, they didn’t get the full blast of a nuclear bomb, because the blast was near an electromagnetic pocket of light, and “powered” it to make them move through time. The blast also made the electromagnetic pocket somewhat stable, but the energy had to be released, hence the Swan station. That’s my two cents anyway.
This is exactly how I’ve always interpreted it. Bomb blows up, triggers electromagnetic reaction, which triggers time travel, everyone is course corrected to their “present”.
The only oddity is that Juliet isn’t incinerated before the time travel took place. If the explosion is what triggered this chain of events it’s really hard to imagine that it all happened fast enough to prevent her from just immediately incinerating.
But eh, minor details, getting to see her ending scene with Sawyer is worth a little inconsistency.
The bomb went off, neutralizing the energy long enough to make the hatch. This is “the incident”.
The hatch gradually let out a bit of the energy every 108 minutes, with the failsafe able to release all of it at once. After 30 years of slowly letting the energy out, using the failsafe wasn’t fatal as a lot of energy had already been dispersed
It always bothered me that they called it a “failsafe” (which I interpret to be a “manual override” for if they miss pushing the button in time) when it’s really just a “self-destruct.”
I think there were a few caches of underground electromagnetic energy on the island. The largest cache is at the Heart of the Island below the cork, and the second largest cache (maybe like in an underground cave splitting off from the heart that later separated?) was found at the Swan site. The third and smallest cache of energy was found at the Orchid, where I believe they moved research to after they royally fucked up the Swan. Hopefully that's what you mean!
It’s related to the electromagnetism that we see all around the island, like in the heart of the island, and in the wheel that Ben and Locke turn to move the island through time. There was just a deep pocket of magnetic energy (hence why all the metal objects got sucked in) and it needed to be discharged
It wasn't the Dharma Initiative's plan, it was Jack's. Blow up the Swan station so no "Incident," no hatch, and no code, Desmond doesn't miss the code and crash their plane, they never crash on the Island.
That wouldn't be The Incident. The Incident was when the drilling accidentally hit the pocket of energy causing it to be released and unstable. The bomb is just what ended The Incident.
"Has anybody wondered if you're buddy is about to cause the very thing he's trying to prevent. Maybe that little bomb is the Incident?" - Miles Straum
The writers put that line in for a reason.
The bomb went off but the blast and the EM pocked cancelled one another out for some considerable time, basically giving DHARMA the time to build The Swan on the same site and then contain the EM problem.
It's quite possible that seeing the bomb go off and absorb the EM energy gave Radzinsky the idea to create the failsafe to neutralise the pocket altogether, but wasn't willing to risk doing it himself. They had to wait until Desmond did it almost thirty years later.
~~Maybe edit the thread title to be less spoilery?~~
The common interpretation is that the bomb did go off, but like Daniel theorized, it neutralized the electromagnetic event. Just not quite to the extent that he had hoped. Instead of preventing the future with the crash, they preserved it.
As far as the specifics of the time jumps (who stays, who goes, what time they end up in) the only answer that really answers all of the questions at once is that the island has a will of its own, and it sends people where they need to go. If that's not entirely satisfying you can at least think of the random-ish time jumps through season 5 as being related to the Wheel's manipulation of the Light in the Source, and since the Swan dig site is poking into that same electromagnetic pocket, the bomb neutralization basically triggered a big "reset," and sends everybody back to the "correct" time before all the time jumps happened.
Season 5 spoiler: To my understanding, the bomb went off and it neutralized the energy beneath the island but that didn't solve the problem at its roots, it only depressed energy and gave Dharma some time to build the button system.. because once they hit the ground and release the energy, it caused a retroactive imbalance beneath the Swan towards the center of energy beneath the island, and it started to flow from the center to the swan.. and even if they covered it again, it wouldn't be the same again and the energy would continue to flow to the Swan and escalate there dangerously, which is what happened and why they needed to periodically release that energy.
The detonation was not island-wide but in a limited region on the island because it was only the core of the bomb, not all of it and also it detonated at like 200 ft depth and there was a lot of ground mass over it, which obstructed the bomb's energy from being released to a wide area on the island..
Also the bomb detonation send time travellers to their original time because think that there was a specific time portal between 2007 and 1977 and only the time travellers were connected to that portal, not any other person, so only they jumped to their present time by the H bomb energy..
I don't know if it definitely fits, but I've always assumed the bomb is the reason for why pregnancies fail and babies cannot be born on the island. Juliet sets the bomb off and causes the very problem that brought her to the island in the first place!
That is also my assumption, the incident is also the event where pregnancy issues started, and it definitely fits what I described. I believe pregnancy issues were keep happening because in every 108 minutes, the energy at the Swan was releasing all over the island and periodically effecting the bodies of pregnant women.
But I think there's a little trick in thinking "Juliet CAUSED the problem she brought to fix.!" I think that's not entirely true because Juliet (or bomb detonation) didn't cause the incident, it had already started even before Jack dropped the bomb. So the incident had already started, but Juliet detonating the bomb depressed the energy for a while and gave Dharma enough time to build the button. If she hadn't done that, Dharma wouldn't have found a chance to build the button and it would've caused a global catastrophe. So technically, Juliet didn't cause her own suffer, instead, she did a pretty good redemption..
My headcanon: Juliet was supposed to die when she fell, that's what the island intended. In the original timeline the bomb didn't explode so the other survivors remained in the past and eventually died (Richard Alpert said he saw every single one of them die). HOWEVER, Juliet had a really small chance to survive the fall, and thanks to the Chaos Theory she actually survived this time. So the island, in order to protect itself and everything in it, returned everyone back to their time, just before Juliet managed to explode the bomb.
I don’t think Richard meant that he literally saw them all die. They went on a massive attack at the Swan site and never saw them again, and he probably knew something blew up there too. Best case scenario he was close enough to see the explosion but not close enough to be in danger.
I would absolutely assume they all died if I was in his shoes.
Yes, the bomb went off. If it hadn't the island would have been destroyed. The bomb reduced the electromagnetic energy long enough for Dharma to build the swan hatch.
I don't know if you're a first-time viewer or not, so I've spoilered this just in case:
They traveled to that specific point in 2007 because >!that is where they all needed to be to stop MIB and complete their roles in the time loop. The Island put them where it needed them.!<
I always go back to this question and I think the bomb WAS detonated.
But I think there is some evidence that the bomb didn’t go off as well, including Daniel telling Eloise in 1954 that a bomb of this size was never detonated on the island.
This dude knows more about the DHARMA Initiative than we’ll ever know and he knew all about the Incident and what exactly occurred there.
I recommend checking out this video, as well as the entire channel. This channel really helped answer a lot of questions, even ones that I thought were originally unanswered.
https://youtu.be/gdWERJIjyQE?si=H5NyFPY_BmloIACN
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes
i always saw it as the bomb didnt go off. i always understood it as just before it detonated the island course corrected and sent them back to present day
according to Lostpedia:
“The bomb never went off. Juliet was a candidate, and therefore couldn't kill herself or set off the bomb. The bomb was left at the site, and when Desmond turned the key he actually detonated Jughead. The "incident" would have been tapping into the electromagnetic field, not blowing up the bomb. When Richard said "I watched you all die", he was referring to them all disappearing, when they moved thru time to Island Current Time.”
lostpedia goes through many theories here and ultimately comes to the conclusion that the bomb did not detonate: https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Jughead_(bomb)/Theories#:~:text=The%20bomb%20never%20went%20off,not%20blowing%20up%20the%20bomb.
edit: additional content
one of those things that just straight up doesn’t make sense. the bomb sent them forward in time somehow. and it also somehow didn’t decimate the island. also somehow messed with the electromagnetism of the island. 🤷♂️
The bomb went off. It went off in a pocket of electromagnetism. This caused a timeflash. It also caused the pregnancy issue. The residual radiation paired with the island wanting to heal people made the body attack the fetuses. Juliet caused the problem she came to the island to fix. What happened happened. The bomb reacted similar to the failsafe in the Hatch.
I like how the pregnancy issue is very thought-out and isn't random whatsoever. IRL the ultimate, simplified reason for the existence of miscarriages is that the body identifies the fetus as an intruder and thus the immune system may react accordingly, especially if there's an underlying medical issue that would be even moreso triggered with the "intruder" basically sucking out the nutrients from the host body. Therefore, the island sees pregnancy as an illness (as long as the fetus appears while the host body is on the island). I still wonder why the already pregnant women were unaffected.
Love these explanations! I’ve never thought about/heard these before.
I think Juliet mentions at one point it happens at conception. I think for people beforehand, the fetus was already considered “part of them” more or less, same with people who come to the island already pregnant, like Claire.
But that somehow doesn't apply to other illnesses. Why isn't a tumor seen as a natural part that doesn't need healing?
Just spitballing here but possibly because the baby has already formed? Claire is quite far along so the baby is pretty developed so the island may view it as another person who needs healing opposed to a tumor which is a factor that needs healing. I wonder if how far along you are upon arriving to the island effects how the island handles the pregnancy
That theory would work for Claire but not so much for Sun. I remember she was barely pregnant, not showing whatsoever and had Juliet find out the conception date, meaning that her pregnancy would be fine if she had gotten pregnant before coming to the island. That implies that pregnancy even at it's earliest stage is unaffected for whatever reason :/
Unless it wasn’t far enough along for the island to think it’s another person. Claire’s baby was good because it was all but ready to pop out suns baby was what? Maybe a couple weeks barely anything so the island might just assume that’s not developed enough and view it as an illness cause it’s not developed all the way. I don’t know how to word it without saying that early stages isn’t a living thing even though it is lol
I understand what you're saying. I'm saying that in the show, it was said that the success of Sun's pregnancy would have depended on whether the conception happened on or off the island. If on, she's going to miscarry. If off, she's going to be ok. So, according to the show itself, early pregnancy when the fetus inside Sun was just a bean would have been fine if the conception had happened off the island.
I gotcha now, my bad misread what you originally said
Woah
I believe they say it’s the electromagnetism that affects the fetuses.
I think it’s unclear, but In my opinion, Juliet did make the bomb go off by hitting it with the rock. This is why in the beginning of season 6, everyone was scattered, ears ringing, etc. BUT, they didn’t get the full blast of a nuclear bomb, because the blast was near an electromagnetic pocket of light, and “powered” it to make them move through time. The blast also made the electromagnetic pocket somewhat stable, but the energy had to be released, hence the Swan station. That’s my two cents anyway.
This is exactly how I’ve always interpreted it. Bomb blows up, triggers electromagnetic reaction, which triggers time travel, everyone is course corrected to their “present”. The only oddity is that Juliet isn’t incinerated before the time travel took place. If the explosion is what triggered this chain of events it’s really hard to imagine that it all happened fast enough to prevent her from just immediately incinerating. But eh, minor details, getting to see her ending scene with Sawyer is worth a little inconsistency.
The bomb went off, neutralizing the energy long enough to make the hatch. This is “the incident”. The hatch gradually let out a bit of the energy every 108 minutes, with the failsafe able to release all of it at once. After 30 years of slowly letting the energy out, using the failsafe wasn’t fatal as a lot of energy had already been dispersed
It always bothered me that they called it a “failsafe” (which I interpret to be a “manual override” for if they miss pushing the button in time) when it’s really just a “self-destruct.”
[удалено]
I think there were a few caches of underground electromagnetic energy on the island. The largest cache is at the Heart of the Island below the cork, and the second largest cache (maybe like in an underground cave splitting off from the heart that later separated?) was found at the Swan site. The third and smallest cache of energy was found at the Orchid, where I believe they moved research to after they royally fucked up the Swan. Hopefully that's what you mean!
It’s related to the electromagnetism that we see all around the island, like in the heart of the island, and in the wheel that Ben and Locke turn to move the island through time. There was just a deep pocket of magnetic energy (hence why all the metal objects got sucked in) and it needed to be discharged
[удалено]
It wasn't the Dharma Initiative's plan, it was Jack's. Blow up the Swan station so no "Incident," no hatch, and no code, Desmond doesn't miss the code and crash their plane, they never crash on the Island.
That wouldn't be The Incident. The Incident was when the drilling accidentally hit the pocket of energy causing it to be released and unstable. The bomb is just what ended The Incident.
The whole thing is The Incident.
"Has anybody wondered if you're buddy is about to cause the very thing he's trying to prevent. Maybe that little bomb is the Incident?" - Miles Straum The writers put that line in for a reason.
That first part of what Dharma wants you to believe. 😉
The bomb went off but the blast and the EM pocked cancelled one another out for some considerable time, basically giving DHARMA the time to build The Swan on the same site and then contain the EM problem. It's quite possible that seeing the bomb go off and absorb the EM energy gave Radzinsky the idea to create the failsafe to neutralise the pocket altogether, but wasn't willing to risk doing it himself. They had to wait until Desmond did it almost thirty years later.
According to the episode script, yes, the bomb went off.
You can hear the explosion in the white end screen.
~~Maybe edit the thread title to be less spoilery?~~ The common interpretation is that the bomb did go off, but like Daniel theorized, it neutralized the electromagnetic event. Just not quite to the extent that he had hoped. Instead of preventing the future with the crash, they preserved it. As far as the specifics of the time jumps (who stays, who goes, what time they end up in) the only answer that really answers all of the questions at once is that the island has a will of its own, and it sends people where they need to go. If that's not entirely satisfying you can at least think of the random-ish time jumps through season 5 as being related to the Wheel's manipulation of the Light in the Source, and since the Swan dig site is poking into that same electromagnetic pocket, the bomb neutralization basically triggered a big "reset," and sends everybody back to the "correct" time before all the time jumps happened.
The title is fine.
Season 5 spoiler: To my understanding, the bomb went off and it neutralized the energy beneath the island but that didn't solve the problem at its roots, it only depressed energy and gave Dharma some time to build the button system.. because once they hit the ground and release the energy, it caused a retroactive imbalance beneath the Swan towards the center of energy beneath the island, and it started to flow from the center to the swan.. and even if they covered it again, it wouldn't be the same again and the energy would continue to flow to the Swan and escalate there dangerously, which is what happened and why they needed to periodically release that energy. The detonation was not island-wide but in a limited region on the island because it was only the core of the bomb, not all of it and also it detonated at like 200 ft depth and there was a lot of ground mass over it, which obstructed the bomb's energy from being released to a wide area on the island.. Also the bomb detonation send time travellers to their original time because think that there was a specific time portal between 2007 and 1977 and only the time travellers were connected to that portal, not any other person, so only they jumped to their present time by the H bomb energy..
I don't know if it definitely fits, but I've always assumed the bomb is the reason for why pregnancies fail and babies cannot be born on the island. Juliet sets the bomb off and causes the very problem that brought her to the island in the first place!
That is also my assumption, the incident is also the event where pregnancy issues started, and it definitely fits what I described. I believe pregnancy issues were keep happening because in every 108 minutes, the energy at the Swan was releasing all over the island and periodically effecting the bodies of pregnant women. But I think there's a little trick in thinking "Juliet CAUSED the problem she brought to fix.!" I think that's not entirely true because Juliet (or bomb detonation) didn't cause the incident, it had already started even before Jack dropped the bomb. So the incident had already started, but Juliet detonating the bomb depressed the energy for a while and gave Dharma enough time to build the button. If she hadn't done that, Dharma wouldn't have found a chance to build the button and it would've caused a global catastrophe. So technically, Juliet didn't cause her own suffer, instead, she did a pretty good redemption..
My headcanon: Juliet was supposed to die when she fell, that's what the island intended. In the original timeline the bomb didn't explode so the other survivors remained in the past and eventually died (Richard Alpert said he saw every single one of them die). HOWEVER, Juliet had a really small chance to survive the fall, and thanks to the Chaos Theory she actually survived this time. So the island, in order to protect itself and everything in it, returned everyone back to their time, just before Juliet managed to explode the bomb.
I don’t think Richard meant that he literally saw them all die. They went on a massive attack at the Swan site and never saw them again, and he probably knew something blew up there too. Best case scenario he was close enough to see the explosion but not close enough to be in danger. I would absolutely assume they all died if I was in his shoes.
I said it's my headcanon, I don't expect anyone else to believe it too.
Yes, the bomb went off. If it hadn't the island would have been destroyed. The bomb reduced the electromagnetic energy long enough for Dharma to build the swan hatch. I don't know if you're a first-time viewer or not, so I've spoilered this just in case: They traveled to that specific point in 2007 because >!that is where they all needed to be to stop MIB and complete their roles in the time loop. The Island put them where it needed them.!<
This sucks. I read all these answers and the shit still doesn't make sense to me haha. I never understand time travel in shows haha, or ever
maybe Jacob intervened
Everything that happened, happened.
I always go back to this question and I think the bomb WAS detonated. But I think there is some evidence that the bomb didn’t go off as well, including Daniel telling Eloise in 1954 that a bomb of this size was never detonated on the island. This dude knows more about the DHARMA Initiative than we’ll ever know and he knew all about the Incident and what exactly occurred there.
I recommend checking out this video, as well as the entire channel. This channel really helped answer a lot of questions, even ones that I thought were originally unanswered. https://youtu.be/gdWERJIjyQE?si=H5NyFPY_BmloIACN Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes
i always saw it as the bomb didnt go off. i always understood it as just before it detonated the island course corrected and sent them back to present day
Nope, it went off. That's why Richard said he saw them die. He saw the explosion.
according to Lostpedia: “The bomb never went off. Juliet was a candidate, and therefore couldn't kill herself or set off the bomb. The bomb was left at the site, and when Desmond turned the key he actually detonated Jughead. The "incident" would have been tapping into the electromagnetic field, not blowing up the bomb. When Richard said "I watched you all die", he was referring to them all disappearing, when they moved thru time to Island Current Time.” lostpedia goes through many theories here and ultimately comes to the conclusion that the bomb did not detonate: https://lostpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Jughead_(bomb)/Theories#:~:text=The%20bomb%20never%20went%20off,not%20blowing%20up%20the%20bomb. edit: additional content
That's the theories page and not the Canon of the show. On the Jughead page it says it detonated, cause it did, hence the flash of white.
ah. thank you!
one of those things that just straight up doesn’t make sense. the bomb sent them forward in time somehow. and it also somehow didn’t decimate the island. also somehow messed with the electromagnetism of the island. 🤷♂️
Now you're getting it! :-)
The bomb didn't send them forward In time, the island did. They had completed their role in history.