Dharma Food Drop Actually From the Past?

[D-Roc]

We know that depending upon the 'bearing' that you enter the island on, it will either take you ahead or behind normal island time. That is, you will end up in the future or in the past relative to the time-line you were on before you entered/left the island.

Take doctor Ray (season 4) for example. At one point, he was alive and well on the ship..yet he ended up dead on the beach with his thoat slit - this was 'before' Keamy had killed him back on the freighter. This tells us that the islands time is different from that of the outside world..and that if you enter/exit the island on any bearing other than the 'safe' 325 (or is it 305, I forget?) then you will be one a different plain of time than you were before.

Faraday puts this down to "perspective". I agree with him.

Anyway, my point relates to the Dharma food drops. We've all wondered how and why they were still going on post Dharma purge. The last food drop that we know of happened in season 2.

Could the food-drop pallet that we saw land on the island in season 2 actually have been dropped in the past (say, 1980's) but just didn't arrive on the island until November 2004? Did it enter the island on such a bearing, that it didn't arrive on the island (from island perspective) until recently? Are there more food pallets currently travelling through other 'bearings'..

Just a suggestion..i'll hope to add more to this one day.

[monster-eats-pilot]

Hmmm good point.
There is the fact that nobody saw the food being dropped. It just appeared really

[harvey107]

It did have a parachute on though so it looks like someone dropped it

[D-Roc]

Originally Posted by monster-eats-pilot

Hmmm good point.
There is the fact that nobody saw the food being dropped. It just appeared really

Good point, there was a big deal made of the fact that no-one saw/heard a plane flying overheard..which supports the idea of it being dropped years ago, but just not reaching the island from island perspective until now as in season 2

Originally Posted by harvey107

It did have a parachute on though so it looks like someone dropped it

Yeah, i don't dispute that it was 'dropped' per se. What i'm suggesting is that it was dropped many years ago..perhaps when Dharma were still in full swing..but due the the time-delay and possibly being dropped on a very delayed bearing, it might have taken this long (i.e 10-20 years) to reach the island from island-perspective.

[monster-eats-pilot]

Yeah they did make a big point over it and the writers wouldnt just put that in for no reason.

[KatesFate]

Out of curiousity, how many drops have there been that we know of? Was there only the one? Are they always dropped in the same spot I wonder?

Your theory makes sense. Why else would someone continue to drop the food after the Dharma Purge? Unless of course they don't know about the purge, which I doubt.

[Our Mutual Friend]

Daniel's payload experiment did seem to prove that objects travelling to the island balistically take a long time to arrive.
But his delay was only of 30 or so minutes, whereas the drops show a delay of about 30 or so years. Peculiar...

[firebreathingfishies]

I really don't get how the time difference could stretch as far as 30 years. Daniel's payload thing proved that there was a difference of about 30 minutes... I'm trying to get my head around it but I can't

[Our Mutual Friend]

It could possibly be due to speed, i.e. the slower the object is travelling the longer it takes (a parachute drop would travel slower than a rocket thingy?)

Up to the producers how they explain it really. Either that or we just settle for the catch-all explanation of "electromagnetism."

[D-Roc]

Originally Posted by KatesFate

Out of curiousity, how many drops have there been that we know of? Was there only the one? Are they always dropped in the same spot I wonder?

Yeah, I think we've only seen one..and they were also alluded to in the Orientation video that Locke watched back in S1. Furthermore, Ben's fridge in S3 (and S4 - Eggtown, for that matter) was filled with plenty of Dharma goods, indicating that the Others had also benefitted from a food-drop top-up in recent times.

I'm not sure if they're always dropped in the same place..it's possible no doubt, although i think that it they be dropped in various places. Just a hunch really.

Your theory makes sense. Why else would someone continue to drop the food after the Dharma Purge? Unless of course they don't know about the purge, which I doubt.

Indeed..that's also a good shout..that off-island Dharma didn't know about the purge, but then we've pretty much seen that off-island Dharma don't appear to exist anymore So yeah, I think this theory could hold up on the basis of the purge long being over.

Originally Posted by Our Mutual Friend

Daniel's payload experiment did seem to prove that objects travelling to the island balistically take a long time to arrive.
But his delay was only of 30 or so minutes, whereas the drops show a delay of about 30 or so years. Peculiar...

Very. We also have Doctor Ray, who's body arrived to the island a day before he died..and then there's the chopper boys, who left the island during the evening and arrived on the frieghter during the day time. So this tells us that it really depends on the bearing you come in (or out) on. Perhaps why Faraday stresses the needs to stay on "325"..

Originally Posted by firebreathingfishies

I really don't get how the time difference could stretch as far as 30 years. Daniel's payload thing proved that there was a difference of about 30 minutes... I'm trying to get my head around it but I can't

I'll try to explain my understanding of it:

The payload was one isolated instance. It came in one one specific 'bearing'. This bearing equated to a island-time delay of 31-odd minutes from the real-world time.

However, as we've seen with Doctor Ray's dead body, and Sayid, Des and Frank leaving the island on the chopper..if you enter or leave the island on different bearings, these bearings each appear to have different time-consequences in relation to the island. So Doctor Ray's body entered the islands 'sphere of influence' (if you will) on a different bearing from Daniel's payload. Ray's bearing was one which actually ahead of current island time, as he wasn't yet dead in the real-world.

From this we can again establish that different 'bearings' (points of entry) each equate to the different time consequences in relation to the island.

So, seeing as we've already seen time-consequences ranging from seconds to entire days, I'm suggesting that the Dharma pallets which landed on the island in season 2, could actually have been dropped ages ago (10-25 years ago) from a time when Dharma were still in power..but due to the bearing which it was dropped on, it just didn't reach the island until recently.

This hypothesis could also mean that there are other 'things' currently travelling through specific bearings..aswell as things which have arrived on the island FAR sooner than they should have...perhaps this could even tell us something about the Losties arrival..or the black rock, even (although i realise the islands moving could now account for the Black Rock being stranded in the middle of the island)?

[Our Mutual Friend]

Slight problem though, if the foodrop in Season 2 came from a time when the DI were in power, where did the foodrops come from then?
I.e. if the drops take 30 years to arrive, then the DI would have had to have dropped supplies for its own operations 30 years in advance, assuming that the delay effect affects all the drops equally.

That said, the "incident" that is often referred to, could have been the turning point in which instant drops became delayed. But who knows.

[D-Roc]

Originally Posted by Our Mutual Friend

Slight problem though, if the foodrop in Season 2 came from a time when the DI were in power, where did the foodrops come from then?
I.e. if the drops take 30 years to arrive, then the DI would have had to have dropped supplies for its own operations 30 years in advance, assuming that the delay effect affects all the drops equally.

Hmm, possibly, although I'm working under the assumption that each bearing (entry point) has it's own unique time-consequence. So for instance, say the islands sphere has 10,000000 points of entry (bearings)..it's more than likely that at least a fair percentage of these bearings will only have minimal time-consequences. Some will allow the the pallets to arrive minutes, days, weeks, years in the future..some will allow the pallets to arrive days, weeks, months, years delayed..but crucially, some of the bearings will only have slight-time consequences, and so i'd imagine that they'd only be delayed or forwarded by seconds or minutes..

Each bearing could be like a mini-wormhole. Some of these worm-holes may be expanded vacuums which vastly delay the arrival of objects, but equally many bearings (like 325) may be 'normal-ish' and will have little or no time difference to that of the islands, and so they will arrive seconds or minutes after (or before) they are dropped/arrive in outside-world time.

I think that's the best premise to work under, as it allows for variables - those variables being the different time-properties of each 'bearing'

So basically, just to clarify..I think that each bearing is different..each point of entry contains different time-properties

That said, the "incident" that is often referred to, could have been the turning point in which instant drops became delayed. But who knows.

That's a good point, and certainly worth considering as an alternate to the above.