4 8 15 16 23 42

The meaning behind those darn numbers in the TV show LOST has finally been revealed. Well, kind of.

The LOST Experience alternate reality game meant to tide fans over the summer until the fall TV season starts has shed some light on the numbers:



Their meaning was partially explained in the HansoExposed video which can be viewed here. It's been over a month since clues to reveal fragments of the video started leaking out but now all 70 fragments have been collected with the final one coming out today. And the terminal clip explained what they were: numerical values to the core environmental and human factors in the Valenzetti Equation. I theorized this a couple months ago and have been proven right.

An interesting tidbit is how the explanation was phrased:

Valenzetti gave numerical values to the core environmental and human factors in his equation: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42.

"Factors" sticks out to me because two meaning are potentially applicable here. It could mean the contributing elements or it could be referring to the mathematical term meaning numbers that, when multiplied together, produce a given factor. By way of example: you could say that 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 are factors of 7,418,880. (When you multiply the numbers you get 7,418,880.) One can also say that the numbers are numerical values given to factors or hoolies which contribute to something. Valenzetti created an equation that gives the month and year of the end of humanity and one factor is trying to determine that date would be, say, nuclear war. So perhaps the 4 indicates the number of states with nuclear missles.

I'm leaning towards this latter explanation because the word "values" was used in other scenes. On the other hand, 7,418,880 flashed on the screen during the penultimate scene of last season's finale indicating a magnetic anomaly was detected.

Now that the ARG has given players a fairly major revelation, I must wonder how the show's producers will handle it. The ARG was always promoted and being complementary to the show; one needn't know anything about the game to enjoy the TV series. So, will they carry on with the show having a bifurcated audience - one group of fans familiar with the revelations from the ARG and one without? I'm inclined to think that they're not going that route. Why piss off a group of fans by making them play a game on the Net or, at least, look for the results? Thusly I opine that the TV show will reveal the important bits of the ARG that tie directly into it. Personally, I'm envisioning a scene where The Others take one or more of our captured Losties aside and show them the video from the ARG as this is where the main revelations are to be found.