So, what was the effect of detonating the nuke?

[propita]

What's strange is that, if Juliet caused the explosion in 1977 which caused problem of the death of pregnant women which caused Juliet to be brought to the island to solve the problem--then nobody looked at past photos of Dharma and saw her standing there? She was in the one with Jin, James, and Miles.

 

[Ryan8bit]

My theory is that it wasn't the explosion itself or any fallout that caused pregnancy issues, but that the explosion did cause the actual incident. The bomb broke through to the actual light of the island and had an effect similar to the donkey wheel, accessing the light and causing time travel, or at least anchoring existing time travelers back to where they belong. After they disappeared, the Dharma people came back and were able to fill the hole up with cement, but realized that the energy was still unstable and needed to be released every so often. This release of periodic EM energy is what caused the issues with carrying children to term. Dharma was aware of this and tried to come up with a vaccine to minimize the effects, but it only partially worked and still couldn't bring pregnant women to full term.

 

[Delta1]

I think the interaction of the nuke with the Swan energy pocket may explain the infertility. I think it was a nuke; Sayid said the detonator was itself a small nuclear device, so I assume he extracted the fission initiator. It might just have been the conventional explosives that drove the initiator, though. Either way, Juliet blew something up in the swanhole, and here's what happened:

The Light is the essence of all life on Earth. It is most concentrated at the Source, but it can be accessed by digging into the island. Dharma dug into a vein of the Light. The explosion damaged the Light, and the Swan Station kept it in a continual state of distress. Because a smaller Light is in every person, it is necessary for the mother to pass the Light to the child. On the island, that transference process was impeded by the distress to the greater Light, and the smaller light of both mother and child were extinguished. After Desmond turned the Swan failsafe key and liberated the Light imprisoned in the Swan, Sun was able to bear Ji-Yeon.

The Swan site was situated over a pocket of exotic matter-energy, or EM. (Note: may need a better abbreviation; people are already starting to call it electromagnetic energy. --PC) The energy released by Juliet Burke's nuclear device was absorbed almost entirely by that EM, which spread over the island like fallout, weakly interacting with normal matter. This perfusion of EM exacerbated many of the already known properties of this island. EM has a different relationship with the arrow of time than does normal matter; the flow of entropy and heat can be halted or reversed, for instance, and biological processes can be sustained indefinitely. This presents in males as an increase in sperm count, and in females as an inappropriate, and fatal, immune reaction to pregnancy. There is still lively debate on the actual etiology of this reaction: is the supercharged immune system breaking through the placental barrier, or are the transplacental T-cells actually traveling through time from an earlier or later version of the woman? Further research may yield novel treatments for many diseases, particularly infertility and the recent outbreak of an unidentified immunosuppressant agent.

(Great, I think the Groots and AH will approve. Have you given any thought to Jerry's Quantum Consciousness station? He still insists he saw ghost of a Roman noblewoman when he visited the site last spring, and all this talk of the arrow of time and the suspension of natural laws will just spin him up. --HG)

I guess you could also say something about quantum entanglement, since the light is kinda-sorta omnipresent, and entangled particles from the Swan getting into the women and irradiating them in novel and unexpected ways. That could still fool Juliet, if there was radiation damage but no source of radiation and no trace of radioactive particles, right? Pregnancy could be sufficiently stressful that the effects of the radiation outweighed the island healing factor in women.

 

[Scout101]

If you couldn't conceive on the island OR give birth there, it would make a little sense in relation to a problem there, but doesn't really seem to make much sense that you can get pregnant off-island and have a healthy baby ON the island AND you can get pregnant ON the island, but have to give birth elsewhere. If it's something radiation-related, or even magic-energy related, shouldn't any conception on the island be a problem? Feels like more fans trying to close plot holes with wishful thinking and screwy logic, and then whipping out the "A wizard did it" whenever there's a question.

 

[McCoy]

My impression was that it killed in the second trimester regardless of whether you conceived on or off the island. Clair was already in her third so she was able to carry to term successfully. Sun was able to get off the island while still in her first.

 

[DeafPoet]

My impression was that it killed in the second trimester regardless of whether you conceived on or off the island. Clair was already in her third so she was able to carry to term successfully. Sun was able to get off the island while still in her first.

I don't think that's what they were going for. But that's just opinion. You're right that we didn't see any second trimester action on the show. It just doesn't make dramatic sense to me for that to be the stipulation.

 

[RoJoHen]

My impression was that it killed in the second trimester regardless of whether you conceived on or off the island. Clair was already in her third so she was able to carry to term successfully. Sun was able to get off the island while still in her first.

If that were the case, the scene where Juliet the sonogram would not have been as meaningful. The options were:

1) Sun conceived off the Island and would live, but the baby would not be Jin's

2) The baby was Jin's, but that meant she conceived on the Island and would die

 

[Mallet]

My impression was that it killed in the second trimester regardless of whether you conceived on or off the island. Clair was already in her third so she was able to carry to term successfully. Sun was able to get off the island while still in her first.

If that were the case, the scene where Juliet the sonogram would not have been as meaningful. The options were:

1) Sun conceived off the Island and would live, but the baby would not be Jin's

2) The baby was Jin's, but that meant she conceived on the Island and would die

2) The baby was Jin's, but that meant she conceived on the Island and would die unless she got off the Island and had the baby then.

So the facts of the baby problem are:

that if the baby is conceived on the island and the woman tries to have the baby on the Island then the mother and baby would die. But if the baby was conceived off island and born on island it would be fine and a baby conceived on island and born off island would also be fine.

That doesn't sound like a scientific phenomena to me. Sounds like a magical curse that Jacob or the MIB would create.

Why? Well if no one can come to the Island without Jacob's blessing then there would be no new population added to the island. And if no new babies can be born on the Island then the population would never grow, only diminish, as people died of old age, accidents, violence or by leaving.

Eventually only Jacob, The MIB and Richard would be left on the Island.

 

[RoJoHen]

Okay, yes, true. Either way, the point I was making was that if Sun had conceived off-Island, she very likely would have been fine.

 

[McCoy]

It just makes less sense if it's magical. Why would it suddenly kick in just after Ethan's birth, and coincidentally around the time of the Incident? Did Jacob or MiB look at little Ethan and say "Whoa, can't let that happen again!"

 

[Mallet]

Or they could have looked at the "Incident" and gone shit lets stop letting people on here keep multiplying and messing everything up. First step, no more kids. Next step limit the people coming to the Island by killing off all the Dharma people (the "Purge"). Why the "no kids" first? Well just before the Incident all the kids were evacuated off the Island, so there would be none left there. Then with no new children being born (and as long as Dharma didn't bring any back to the Island (which it appears they didn't since we didn't see any during the Purge)) then it was only adults left for either the MIB or Jacob to kill off. No innocent children.

Basically if none of the facts of the deadly births make sense scientifically (and they don't), then we are left with magic being the only answer.

 

[RoJoHen]

It just makes less sense if it's magical. Why would it suddenly kick in just after Ethan's birth, and coincidentally around the time of the Incident? Did Jacob or MiB look at little Ethan and say "Whoa, can't let that happen again!"

I never said anything about it being magical. It was my interpretation that the Incident produced some radiation or something that interfered with pregnancy (specifically is the child was conceived on the island). I mean, a fucking nuke went off. Whether or not it blew up the island, nukes still have side-effects.

 

[McCoy]

Agreed. But I'm willing to suspend disbelief if the writers want to tell me that known nuclear effects combined with unknown "magic EM light" effects can cause this type of pregnancy thing.