Get Lost

Less than a week from the season premiere, ladies and gents, I come bearing gifts in the form of the full Alvar Hanso video and some other choice nuggets from this past summer’s “Lost Experience” web game.

Some highlights:

• The video of Hanso was the final post of one “Rachel Blake,” who had made it her goal to bring down the Foundation. A series of video blog posts, hidden at various locations on the web, chronicled her efforts to track down Hanso Chief Technologist Thomas Mittelwerk and the missing Alvar Hanso.

  Links to her posts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ComiCon WTK Final

• The DHARMA in “Dharma Initiative” stands for Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications.
• The infamous Numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42) are part of the “Valenzetti Equation,” which apparently predicts the demise of the human race. Enzo Valenzetti, an Italian mathematician, was commissioned by a joint Soviet-U.S. effort to predict the exact date the human race would come to an end. That effort, prompted by the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, eventually made its way into the guiding hands of the Hanso Foundation’s DHARMA Initiative. The chief goal of the Initiative is to come up with a way, through experimentation, to change one of the “core factors” (the Numbers) of Valenzetti’s equation, thus ensuring the ongoing existence of the human race.
• The Initiative, according to the end of the Hanso video, failed years ago and the Foundation’s efforts no longer focus on the Island (which begs the question, why the eff is anyone there?, but that’s for season 3 to expound upon). Mittelwerk is leading a group of scientists into a village (sounds like it’s in Africa) to give the natives a vaccine (which is actually anything but) to contain a viral outbreak. Unfortunately for the natives, Mittelwerk’s goal is a 30% mortality rate. Those who die are to be brought back to someplace called the “Vick Institute” for genetic research. In the course of Rachel Blake’s research, we learn Enzo Valenzetti visited a patient at this Institute.
• There’s actually a bunch more stuff that led to all of this info, but you can find that on your own. Check out http://www.thehansofoundation.org/ for a letter from Mr. Hanso as well. Humanity.

So, yeah, it’s all probably a load of worthless miniutiae, but you should digest it nonetheless with the hope it will further enhance your viewing experience of Lost’s third season. Huzzah!