20 September 2006

The Lost Experience

The Lost Experience, the alternate reality game that ran this summer, has finally finished, and the secrets of Hurley’s numbers on Lost have been revealed.

[Spoilers…]

Fans of ABC’s hit SF series Lost who played this summer’s alternate-reality game The Lost Experience got a big payoff if they stuck with it: the secret to Hurley’s numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42) and revelations about the Dharma Initiative and the Hanso Foundation. The answers, which were reported by TV Guide, can be found in a video detailing the elaborate backstory to the show, which has been posted in its entirety on YouTube.com.

The numbers represent the Valenzetti Equation, a mathematical formula having to do with the timetable for humanity’s extinction. The show’s sinister Dharma Initiative was an effort by the mysterious Hanso Foundation to ward off that inevitability. When Dharma failed, Hanso’s nefarious acting leader, Thomas Mittelwerk, set in motion a plan to release a virus that would kill 30 percent of the world’s population.

More information can be found by poking around Wikipedia’s entry on The Lost Experience.