Nanotechnology, The Black Swarm, and The Others


If you haven’t read my posting A Theory about LOST, you should probably go read that before you continue reading this page.

In the “23rd Psalm”, we got a really good look at the monster that the crash survivors have been hearing (and seeing) on the island. So far, the only two people that have really stared down the “black swarm” are Locke and Eko.

So, what the heck is that “black swarm”? The nanotechnology theory I posted about previously explains this. The monster appears to be smoke, but is actually made of many tiny machines that communicate with each other.

The idea of many tiny machines communicating with each other isn’t all that far-fetched. Research Smart Dust at Berkeley, and at companies like Dust Networks and Crossbow is being done right now. A few years ago, I worked with some of the Smart Dust “motes”. (I just worked with them, not on the actual project itself…just wanted to make that clear). They’re about the size of a quarter and have a tiny radio built into them. Each “mote” communicates with the other motes within it’s radio range to communicate the data it’s tracking. In the case of the devices I used, they communicated the temperature. The motes nearest to the base station communicate all the data from the rest of the “swarm” to that base station. The base station can then do whatever it wants with the data.

Now, extrapolate the idea of smart dust out in every direction. Make the motes as small as real dust (the size of machine in nanotechnology), increase the processing power, really soup up the software the things run, and it’s not all that far fetched to think that the smoke monster we saw would be possible. All they would need is some sort of propulsion.

I think that’s really what the monster is. A swarm of nanotech machines. “Nanites”, if you want to use a “Star Trek: The Next Generation” term. They’re moving around the island, and they’re smart. Or at least they appear that way. They could just be following their programming and have no real intelligence of their own. Right now, that’s my bet.

Eko stared the swarm down. While the swarm was in front of Eko, we saw a number of images from Eko’s past flash through the swarm itself. It appeared to read Eko’s mind. That could be just the “sci-fi” part of LOST that doesn’t need to be explained, it could be that it read Eko’s electrical brain impulses….however it did it doesn’t matter really. The main point is, it flashed scenes from Eko’s life and then moved on. Presumably, this is the same thing that happened to Locke. What was the swarm doing?

I think it was assessing whether or not Eko was an “enemy”. A enemy of what? ….Well, that’s the question. An enemy to the island? An enemy to something it’s trying to protect? Is it just deciding that anything that’s “hostile” is an enemy?

Well, that very well could be. The pilot was in a military-like uniform that the swarm could have taken as the identifying mark of someone that’s “hostile”.

Say for a moment that all that is true. There are people on the island that the swarm would kill (or worse… more on that in a minute) if it got a chance, and there are people on the island that the swarm would leave alone. If the swarm won’t touch anyone it doesn’t perceive as a threat, the vulnerable people on the island would surround themselves with people that are “safe”. I think that’s a reason they could be taking all the children. What could be safer than a child? Everyone assumes Walt was taken for his “psychic” abilities that everyone think he has; it could just be he was taken because he was a child.

So, what could be worse than being killed by that thing? I think it’s also likely that the swarm might have the ability to take people over, based on what Danielle said to Sayid (see my previous posting ).
In the comments someone asked why the word “quarantine” was inside the hatch, instead of the outside. If the swarm was able to infect people, that would be the reason. It also explains the reason Desmond has been taking the injections. If Desmond spent any time at all outside (gathering fruit, other food, wood, etc), he’d take injections to prevent the swarm from infecting him.

3 thoughts on “Nanotechnology, The Black Swarm, and The Others”

  1. This doesn’t really relate to that but have you noticed that all the survivors of the crash are connected like sawyer meets jacks dad, sayid leaves his bag with shannon, hurley is on the tv when jin is beating up some guy and locke works in a box factory and hurley owns a box factory. also i think you could be right with you nanotschnology theory and i think it would be really cool if you were.

  2. I belive that this series have not such an easy to track story. If it turns out to be so predictable it loses interest. Besides, your theory rejects the simple fact that this all revolves around two things. Walt, Clair’s son and the numbers.Besides, Daniele’s daughter Alex is alive and well… I have my one theory on the making… when i have more u will be informed. Hope you are wrong, but even so is a good theory.

  3. The original post about nanotech was done back in October and formulated before that, all much before the incident with Mr. Eko… There weren’t to many people at the time that I was talking to, that had that theory about the monster. Nothing so far as proven it wrong.

    Having said that, I’d be pretty surprised if any of the current theories out there are exactly correct. There have been enough twists and turns in the show already, and I expect them to continue.

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