CHAPTER 2 The Dharma InitiativeIn 1970, the Dharma Initiative (DI) was created and it is the brainchild of Gerald and Karen DeGroot -- two doctoral candidates at the University of Michigan. Following in the footsteps of visionaries such as B.F. Skinner (there is a jump cut/splice in the video) imagined a large scale communal research compound where scientists and free thinkers from around the globe could pursue research inmeteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism, and utopian social[splice] Danish industrialist and munitions magnate Alvar Hanso whose financial backing made their dream of a multi-purpose social science research facility a reality. According to the Hanso Website, the Hanso Foundation stands at the vanguard of social and scientific research for the advancement of the human race. For forty years, the foundation has offered grants to worthy experiments designed to further the evolution of the human race and provide technological solutions to the most pressing problems of our time. The Hanso Foundation: a commitment to encouraging excellence in science and technology and furthering the cause of human development. So here is the beginning of my theory on the DI - some time ago (who knows exactly when), a meteorite landed on the island, creating the crater (from Danielle's map). A group of scientists (most likely the U of M professors) went to the island to study the meteorite and the electromagnetic energy associated with it (from the Orientation movie). During these studies they found something unusual about the meteorite (it might possess un-earthly properties). The researchers, through Dharma, set up a research facility on the island to somehow use the meteorite's properties to conduct the 6 experiments (more later); whereas these experiments would not be possible without some extraordinary/un-earthly properties. During these experiments, an "incident" occurred. To ensure thefuture of the project, the numbers protocol and the security system are developed to prevent whatever the "incident" is, or created, from leaving the island. Now for the experiments and Hanso. According to the Hanso Foundation website, there are eight "initiatives" that Hanso is researching: The Hanso Life-Extension Project; the Hanso Foundation Electromagnetic Research Initiative; The Hanso Quest for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence; The Hanso Mathematical Forecasting Initiative; The Hanso Cryogenics Development Imperative; The Hanso Juxtapositional Eugenics Development Institute; The Hanso Accelerated Remote Viewing Training Facility; and the Dharma Initiative. We can safely assume, imo, that these initiatives were developed to meet the mission statement (above) on the website. As many, if not all of us are aware, the Hanso Foundation website (specifically, the Life Extension link) has recently opened itself to us and provided some additional clues to ?Lost'; clues which might help us to fill in the backstory of the DI and the island. In addition to a press release touting Joop, the positive results of their research, the website reveals a cease and desist letter to stop experiments in Zanzibar because of a disease...an extremely contagious disease. The press release basically says that on the 21st of September 2005, a telex was received from an experimental research station in Zanzibar, by an experimenter named Einar Ragnasson, saying that an experimental orangutan named Joop had just celebrated his 105th birthday - Joop had been harvested in 1900 by British explorers. Chimps in captivity typically have a life expectancy of 60 years, so this was a "milestone" in their research From these two documents, the following reasonable inferences can be made (although I did not come up with these, I do agree with them - thanks back_gammon!): 1. Hanso is alive and kicking, still loaded with money, and apparently still runs the Hanso Foundation despite being quite old. Hanso himself may be participating as a subject in the life extension project - the simian/human barrier that was broken indicates that if not Hanso himself, then other human test subjects are involved. This because only humans are a reservoir for meningitis - it has never been found in animals before. 2. Any incidents on our island have not stopped Hanso from pursuing research efforts elsewhere. He has no qualms about violating human subject research ethics, nor does he seem concerned with various other legalities. 3. Some (or none) of the research begun on the island may have been continued off the island at another Hanso research facility. Since life extension was not mentioned in the Orientation video, we cannot be totally certain the work was begun on the island. However when more missing bits from the video are revealed, we may find this to be true. 4. Why does the health organization want to inspect the Life Extension project? And why are they sending a detachment? So now that we know that the DI is one of seven initiatives pursued by the Hanso Foundation, let's get back to the DI and the island. Remember my very important comment from above - that no one has ever left the island? Well, if this is true, and I have faith that it is, then anyone who has ever come to this island as part of the DI is either still on the island or has died. If that is the case, how does the Hanso Foundation or Dharma know about the island? If no one has ever left, it makes any explanation for project startup seem suspect. If no one can leave, the island could never be discovered until the advent of radio communications. So how did Dharma find the island? IMO, someone would have to crash/land on the island and radio off the island to their people to let them know that it is there (sounds very similar to Danielle's story to me). Basically, they would have to know about the island to send someone to the island, but how do they know about the island without first sending someone. Argh! IMO, I believe that it is safe to assume that the Degroots went to the island and very well led the research on the island. Thus, if no one has ever left the island, then...the Degroots are still on the island.Also, just because supplies were brought in doesn't mean that the person bringing them left (Kelvin could have replenished the supplies assuming that he indeed was sent to the island by Dharma. Could the Nigerian drug plane been a supply ship?). Finally, in regards to the DI and the island, I wanted to briefly discuss some potential general reasons for being on the island and conducting the research. Throughout the boards, there has been some discussion as to the role that Mayan religion/culture plays into the storyline, which imo (and please correct me if I am wrong), was started once we saw the Mayan calendar in the Degroots "office". The Mayans predicted the world as we know it would "end" in the year 2012, which is 42 years from the creation of the DI (cue spooky music). My understanding is that the Mayans believed that 2012 signified the beginning of a new age. In this new age, human beings were expected to reach a higher level of consciousness than had previously been reached. Given the Hanso Foundation mission statement, in conjunction with the types of experiments being conducted on the island and elsewhere, I would say that there is a connection to the Mayans' belief in achieving a higher level of consciousness.