Lost Experience Spoilers
I know it can be frustrating for people who don’t want to play The Lost Experience to see these posts all summer, but hopefully we can wrap up the central storyline without too many extraneous details.
The focus of the story is on a young woman by the name of Rachel Blake. She was raised by a single mother, and decides to trace her educational funds one day, and finds that they originate from The Hanso Foundation (THF), a so-called philanthropic organization that supposedly uses science for the betterment of humankind.
However, as she digs deeper, she uncovers many dark secrets about the organization. She decides to start hacking their website under the pseudonym “Persephone”, on a mission to expose the executives and projects of THF. They all involve illegal or unethical activities, including illegal organ harvesting, use of mathematical forecasting to start wars, questionable experiments with genetic engineering and life extension, and the intentional spread of viruses to limit population growth.
She discovers that the founder of the organization, Alvar Hanso himself, is missing, and that the president and heir apparent, Thomas Werner Mittelwerk, is running the Foundation. He is something of a mad scientist with a Messiah complex, who will stop at nothing to further his own agenda. She follows him and the clues throughout numerous European cities, Sri Lanka, and even stops at Comic Con to accuse the Lost panel writers of being liars and helping THF. Along the way, she meets a number of ‘accessory’ characters that become friends and try to help her, some of whom even give up their lives for the cause.
The most important things she finds that are relevant to the Lost story are about the DHARMA Initiative’s connection to the Valenzetti Equation (first seen on blast door map). Enzo Valenzetti was an Italian mathematician who was contracted by the U.N. Security Counsel after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 to formulate an equation to predict how and when humanity would destroy itself. Each of The Numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42, are “core factors” in this equation, standing for a different method of self-destruction, such as nuclear war or pandemic. The hieroglyphics, as seen on the countdown clock in Lost, mean “Underworld”, but are representative symbols for The Numbers in the Valenzetti Equation.
DHARMA turns out to be an acronym that stands for Department of Heuristics and Research into Material Applications. They were a group funded by THF to look into changing these environmental and human factors (The Numbers), thereby saving humanity. They were sent to a remote island location to attempt this, and the stations, food and medicine drops were all for these scientists. The radio tower (Danielle mentioned to Hurley) was set up by DHARMA to broadcast the Numbers until one of the values could be changed. There is the suggestion that the Sickness may have been purposely introduced as a transgenic virus that was part of their experimentation with a ‘vaccine’ aimed at manipulating one of these values.
In the end, Mittelwerk says DHARMA failed, but he still seems determined to continue the work at all costs, even that of many human lives. He imprisoned mathematicians and autistic savants in the Vik Institute (supposedly a mental health hospital) and forced them to run the Valenzetti Equation over and over, until they verified that a mortality rate of 30% was “optimal” for his research purposes. It appears that there are specific ‘genetic targets’ that are being sought for experimentation, who may have different degrees of susceptibility to this disease.
He was about to send another group of scientist recruits to some remote villages to spread the virus again, when he was partially thwarted by Rachel Blake. She blew the whistle on THF’s unsavory activities. THF headquarters were raided by law enforcement, but it was a trap, and Mittelwerk got away. His last words were a vow that we hadn’t heard the last from him, and that he still had the virus and planned to use it.
In the end, Rachel tracks down Alvar Hanso in Norway. He claims that he was unable to stop Mittelwerk, because he was a relative prisoner in his home, due to experimental medical treatments (not elaborated, but appear to involve life extension). The big revelation given at the end is that Alvar Hanso is Rachel’s real father.
Other revelations given along the way that are connected to Lost:
The Black Rock was a slave ship from the 1800s that was owned by Magnus Hanso, Alvar’s grandfather, a Danish trader. It was supposedly shipwrecked and never heard from again.
The Apollo Candy Company is owned by The Hanso Foundation. Some of the experimental ingredients in their products include psychotropic and viral-spreading substances.
Gary Troup wrote not only Bad Twin, but also a non-fiction book on the Valenzetti Equation; however, all the copies were bought up by THF to keep the equation secret. Troup was flying with his financee, Cindy Chandler, the flight attendent on Flight 815 (and Lost tail section survivor) when the plane crashed. He is presumed dead.
The Hanso Foundation has close ties to Widmore Corporation (in the U.K.) and Paik Heavy Industries (in Korea). The latter was contracted to build THF a huge quarantined hospital ship called the Helgus Antonius.
There are two new DHARMA films that are shown. One is called “Psychology Testing Issues 1980″, and is simply a rapid fire sequence of 115 images, some of which are repetitive themes from Lost (boars, medication vials, etc.). View that one HERE. The other was the hugely revealing film we are calling the “Sri Lanka video”, which Rachel shot, and which is led to many of the revelations discussed above. You can view that one second from the bottom below. Both this and the other film have new DHARMA logos.
Rachel’s videos on YouTube in chronologic order:
#1 VIDEO (Copenhagen)
#2 VIDEO(Copenhagen)
#3 VIDEO (Copenhagen)
#4 VIDEO (Copenhagen)
#5 VIDEO (Iceland)
#6 VIDEO (Italy)
#7 VIDEO (Paris)
#8 VIDEO (Paris)
#9 VIDEO (Paris)
#10 VIDEO (Paris)
Comic Con VIDEO (San Diego, not shot by her)
#11 VIDEO (Sri Lanka)
#12 VIDEO (Norway)
Hope this was of some help! Please comment if you see glaring omissions or inaccuracies. For those who want more details with pictures and links (but still directed to storytelling only for non-players), click HERE.
