Are we sure it's been 16 years?

[murbot]

When Sayid calculated the time based on the broadcast numbers he heard, that were translated from French by Shannon, he added up the time and figured it to be 16 years. I may be incorrect about a couple things, but I'm not so sure it's really been 16 years since Daneille has been there.

1) Did Shannon translate correctly?

2) Did Sayid calculate correctly? (Ex. I don't recall for sure if he accounted for leap years)

3) When they told Daneille it's been 16 years, her reaction was "It's been that long?" and though she's a little off anyway, she seemed surprised that it had been that long.

4) Whether or not it's really been 16 years may play a role in how long Desmond has been in the hatch (on the island).

[LUKEYP]

I'm taking it for certain that its been 16 years...

[DarkDragoon]

Well he said that if each repeat was 30 seconds long, that it would be approximatly 16 years. If they were 20 seconds long, then he could be way off.

[henryporter]

from my limited french Shannon translated the message correctly although it wouldn't matter... the iterations were in English.

Much more important is the exact length of the message. As stated by DarkDragoon, over that number of repeats a few seconds out makes a big difference.

[p914]

Can someone go back to that epsiode and find out the number of iterations and also time how long the message was?

[crossing2004]

While I might be prone to agree, it just kind of seems like if he was wrong, it would have been brought up again somehwere in the season. He says 16 years in the second episode and no one really disputes it, so I'm assuming its right.

[p914]

While I might be prone to agree, it just kind of seems like if he was wrong, it would have been brought up again somehwere in the season. He says 16 years in the second episode and no one really disputes it, so I'm assuming its right.

I think it would be simple enough to verify this... Someone get the # of iterations and time how long the recording is...

[henryporter]

iteration 17294533 when Sayid realises it's a repeat. Message, including the iteration is only 18 seconds long. that makes it 311301594 seconds since it started which is 5188359.9 minutes or 86472.66 hours or 3603 days or 9.871 years.

Sayid was way out.

[p914]

iteration 17294533 when Sayid realises it's a repeat. Message, including the iteration is only 18 seconds long. that makes it 311301594 seconds since it started which is 5188359.9 minutes or 86472.66 hours or 3603 days or 9.871 years.

Sayid was way out.

BINGO!!!!!

NICE WORK!!!!!!

THIS IS HUGE INFO!!!!!!!

[elec]

That changes everything! How old Aaron was when Danielle came to the island. How long Desmond has been there. So many thing would be different...nice find guys.

[p914]

That changes everything! How old Aaron was when Danielle came to the island. How long Desmond has been there. So many thing would be different...nice find guys.

This is HUGE HUGE HUGE INFO!!!!

[henryporter]

This new timeframe also ties in better with the whole Shannon's dad theory and Jack's wife in the hospital doesn't it?

[RedSimmy]

Actually i read somewhere, that the actual time is closer to eight years( yes thats right a cursed number again) and this would be due to the fact, each message would be longer than the last, because the voice is saying more as the number of repeats increases ...

[LUKEYP]

Let's not forget that it's TV people and that somethings should just be accepted.

[RedSimmy]

Ive just thought, kinda far-stretched but if the actual time is 8-9 years, that would make walt and alex roughly the same age, and if of course she is female, could they be destined to be the new adam and eve ??? ... just a thought ...

[henryporter]

If we wanted to just accept things would we be posting on a forum about them? Lets face it people, Lost has turned us into geeks!

It is just about impossible to allow for the time difference in each repeat of the iteration but it would mean that an amount of time needs to be subtracted from the total and 8 years ties in with "the numbers" so that sounds right to me.

[sayid11]

don't forget that each time a new number adds up to the iterations for ex:
when it reached 10 it was a second longer then when he only said 9 so
we have to do it like this... lets say the message is 20 seconds total
we have a 7 number iteration right now at start it was 1 so the message was
only 14 second long so i calculated like this:
9(messeges)*14(seconds)+91*15+900*16+9000*17+90000 *18+900000*19+6294531*20=144,779,511 seconds/60=2,413,325.183 minutes/60=40,222.08 hours/24=1675.92 days/365=4.591 which is 5 years and 226 days

I hope you get what i ment ;)

[henryporter]

jesus, you are way too mathematical for me but i'll suppose you're right.

The problem is, wouldn't a difference as small as 0.25 of a second make a large difference over this number of iterations? we can't be exact but i would guess that the amount of time is one of Hurley's numbers so that implies 8 as the perfect candidate!

[RedSimmy]

WTF, lol crazy sums .. though a desagree about it being a second longer than when he said 9, to me when you say ten and nine, it actually takes longer to say nine, what i ment was it started off 1 digit ( perhaps1 second) then, eventually got up to this badass number that would take a whole lot longer (in seconds) ... if that makes sense ?

[sayid11]

thats the way you should calculate it if you have the accurate numbers

[RedSimmy]

oh right i see now, lol, sorry if i came across as arrogant or something ...

[LOSTMAN]

Or maybe we're just supposed to accept the length of time.... For all we know, Desmond could be commuting back and forth to this island. We can already tell that he is on it under his own power and not because of an accident, like the rest of the people that we know on the island. The 8 year idea might be interesting, since it is a number and all. And with Jack and Sarah, for all we know, that might have only been a couple of years. Just because they made jack have more hair back then, doesn't mean it was a LONG time ago. Can anyone find a screenshot of the MURAL in Desmond's place?? Lindeloff(in Entertainment weekly which I just got) said the answer to Desmond can be foujd if you study the MURAL, or we will just have to wait until Oct 5th....

[henryporter]

damn mathematicians and their precision!

RedSimmy, your logic is at least fathomable to me and I think both you and sayid11 are basically saying the same thing: it takes longer to say 17294533 than it does to say 1 therefore the time of each iteration is variable by this reasonably small amount that would add up to months over the number of repititions.

[henryporter]

There's mural analysis on the forum in a clearly titled topic.

I can't remember but did Jack and Sarah actually complete their wedding? I thought that episode just showed the run up to it, maybe they didn't go through with it at all?

Jack says he's not married and doesn't wear a ring or anything.

[sayid11]

that the message played in the background most of the scene and the one
shannon is listening to closly are diffrent in length and in text

[RedSimmy]

LOSTMAN you say ou think Desmond is coming and going to the island yet i disagree, im sure J.J. Abramms said at one point that any on the island never leaves the island, though this raises the quesiotn, where does he get his essential supplies ? Oh and about iterations, i agree it is definately more likely to be 8, than anything else in my opinion ...

[henryporter]

I thought that but I discounted my suspicions, that would be very poor production values.

[crossing2004]

While the math on the forum is probably most likely correct, it's the math on the show that matters right now, and right now were supposed to accept that Sayid was correct. Although, with the new findings on this forum, I wouldn't be surpried if they find a Sayid-smart like guy in the 'others' who got the time the people on the forum did.

[ace_ryan_icon]

Why would he be wrong? What would be the point of making Sayid wrong? :P

[crossing2004]

Why would he be wrong? What would be the point of making Sayid wrong? :P

Having Sayind be wrong about something as big as that would make for a very interesting storyline later on, especially with the others coming into play as well as the other survivors.

[murbot]

When Sayid and Daneille first had their conversation. Her response last season to him telling her it's been 16 years always seemed to be something they would one day revisit. She seemed to believe it, but she also seemed as though she felt it couldn't be that long. She would have also reacted the same way to 15 years. The next lowest number in our LOST number set being 8, has lead me to believe she's been there for 8 years.
However, the lenght of time Daneille has been on the island may not have anything to do with the lenght of time Hatch Desmond has been on the island.

[Lostinlife3]

iteration 17294533 when Sayid realises it's a repeat. Message, including the iteration is only 18 seconds long. that makes it 311301594 seconds since it started which is 5188359.9 minutes or 86472.66 hours or 3603 days or 9.871 years.

Sayid was way out.


wow ifs thats true then everything we've thought so far is wrong......

[KnightRyder]

LOSTMAN you say ou think Desmond is coming and going to the island yet i disagree, im sure J.J. Abramms said at one point that any on the island never leaves the island, though this raises the quesiotn, where does he get his essential supplies ? Oh and about iterations, i agree it is definately more likely to be 8, than anything else in my opinion ...


i dont know if you guys noticed this but during the beginning scenes of this episode, well.... look at Desmond's washer and dryer, they're pretty damn new looking, that model of washer and dryer couldnt have been out for more than 2 years... yet look at everything else in the hatch, Record players? OLD computers? OLD equipment.

i dont know, just seems od to me that he's got all old looking things and a relatively new lookin washer and dryer.

im not too great at understanding things in this show, i know some people here can put pieces together very fast so i'll let you do it.

[crossing2004]

When Sayid and Daneille first had their conversation. Her response last season to him telling her it's been 16 years always seemed to be something they would one day revisit. She seemed to believe it, but she also seemed as though she felt it couldn't be that long. She would have also reacted the same way to 15 years. The next lowest number in our LOST number set being 8, has lead me to believe she's been there for 8 years.
However, the lenght of time Daneille has been on the island may not have anything to do with the lenght of time Hatch Desmond has been on the island.

Yeah, you're right about that. It seems like we have a lot of different things going on here. Danielle and her stuff. The 'others' The survivors on the other side of the island. And now Desmond

[EchoBrain]

I'm taking it for certain that its been 16 years...yeah me too

[murbot]

I don't want to put the focus of this on the washer and dryer at all. But they were put there to mess with us. That's has to be why those models were chosen. They could easily have chosen models that obviously looked like they were new or 20 years old. I know my old washer and dryer could never have been mistaken for a new unit (nasty green machine).

A person living in those quarters with only 4 uniforms (based on the rack of uniforms in one pic), and clothes we saw him wearing, wouldn't really need a washer and dryer to survive. He could easily wash them by hand.
Granted the entire hatch seems to have been built with many amenities of everyday life as many of us have grown up to know it as. If I were building such a hatch, and put most of the items we saw in place, I may have just forgotten about a washer and dryer, knowing that I could easily wash by hand.

So, back to the point. They were put there specifically for us to see and try to mess with us and our timeline theories. While I do tend to think they look less then 5 years old, there were many units like that back in the 60's and 70's designed to look futuristic (spaceage), and nowadays, some such items are built to look retro. Even if that retro look was suppossed to look like the future (owe, headache).

Again, back to the point. No matter the age of the washer and dryer, I don't believe Desmond's been there for more then 5-8 years.

[DoppelgangerONE]

I would guess that the number that they wanted her to be on the island would be the 16 that Sayid originally suggested.

Remember, this happened in one of the first few episodes, and the producers/writers still weren't sure if the show was gonna be a huge success, so they didn't anticipate a bunch of people on the internet doing the math to figure out how long the message had actually been going on.

I say, just take it as it has been told.

[DoppelgangerONE]

Plus, we're not totally sure how long Danielle was on the island before she found the radio tower and changed the message.

[Mojave]

I believe the blonde girl on the boat that took Walt was Alex and she looked to be a middle teenager, roughly 15 or 16, which would jibe very well with Danielle being on the island for 16 years.

[HDS]

iteration 17294533 when Sayid realises it's a repeat. Message, including the iteration is only 18 seconds long. that makes it 311301594 seconds since it started which is 5188359.9 minutes or 86472.66 hours or 3603 days or 9.871 years.

Sayid was way out.

He says the message is roughly 30 seconds long, I counted it my self and it was 30 or 31 seconds, and by that his calculations are correct, i get 16 years 5 1/2 months.

[johndoe75]

i just saw on the special features dvd the original script for jack it says he is 40. he looks younger true, they changed the caracters true, its just a little something

[chimchim]

red herring.

Sayid is correct... by script. If the message isn't quite right, it was a props and sound effect crew screwup.

I think we're chasing a wild goose here.

[oddishx]

I believe the blonde girl on the boat that took Walt was Alex and she looked to be a middle teenager, roughly 15 or 16, which would jibe very well with Danielle being on the island for 16 years.

Thats true... Check this site http://www.lostcountdown.moo.no/
I'm not sure it is correct, but it is something to think about...

[rstynls]

You guys know that Javi confirmed 16 years already right?

http://www.thefuselage.com/Threaded/showthread.php?t=14649

[henryporter]

I counted 18 seconds for the message length but i didn't account for editing on TV, I presumed that the message was played in it's entirety. Therefore I suppose we should trust Sayid, there is no point where the message plays with no cuts.

And hey, 16 is also one of Hurley's numbers!

[HDS]

I counted 18 seconds for the message length but i didn't account for editing on TV, I presumed that the message was played in it's entirety. Therefore I suppose we should trust Sayid, there is no point where the message plays with no cuts.

And hey, 16 is also one of Hurley's numbers!

I counted all from 11 second to 18 but the time I counted 30 seconds was when Shannon listens to the whole thing the last time it's played (I assume because the batteries ran out, don't know though)

[Serendipitous]

Who's Javi?

[wcupmartin6]

http://lost-media.com/modules.php?name=coppermine&file=displayimage&album=648&pos=67


This guy is holding a flip top cell phone that is not the size of a half gallon of milk. Pretty sure that it couldn't be from 16 years ago. But then there is Jack's hair. Go figure.

[rstynls]

He's one of the writers, posts on The Fuselage, another Lost message board where some of the creators and actors post. He has personally confirmed it was meant to be 16 years. Its actually old news.

[RecklessAbandon]

The message is slightly different each time it's played due to splicing and cutting (you can hear it). THUS, if the full message is 30 seconds long, as we'd assume it would be (we have no reason to believe the writers would LIE about that) and Sayid realized on iteration 17294533 that it was a repeat, that's total 518 835 990 seconds. That's 8 647 266.5 minutes. That's 144 121.1083 hours. That's 6 005.046 days. That's 16.45 years or 16 years and (roughly) 5 months. So Sayid was right after all.

[Carrie123]

Good call wcupmartin6 - I personally thought the hosptial was very modern too. I'm guessing Jacks flashback was 2-3 years ago tops. This might explain why Desmond has newer stuff and a tonne of supplies in Hatch i.e. that he himself has only been down there a couple of years (or less)

Does Jack have that stupid hair cut in any of his other Sarah flashbacks form last season, or was series 2 the first time that awful wig got an airing?

[phill]

Not got time to read the whole thread but to throw a spanner in the works, we don't know that the iterations reset when danielle put her message on. perhaps it was only 16 years since the numbers went out and danielles shorter than this.