The LOST Place The Radio Tower

Parent Location

The Island

Place Type

DHARMA Initiative Building

Description

Built around the time the DHARMA Initiative arrived on the Island, the radio tower's purpose was to broadcast the core numerical values of the Valenzetti Equation until such time that one of the research projects on the Island had managed to change one of the values - broadcasting to the their backers on the outside that "the one true way" had been found, and that the Equation can be changed. The tower was to broadcast the signal on a secret frequency in an encrypted format known only to the backers of the Initiative on the outside. In 1988, two groups in the Pacific began to pick up the signal from the tower without any encryption. The first group was a listening post in the South Pacific where Sam Toomey and Leonard Simms picked up the signal. While their official purpose was to monitor longwave radio frequencies, it has not been established what part of the radio band the signal they picked up was on. The second was a French research ship at sea which included Danielle Rousseau. Her ship crashed on the Island, and with the help of a time-travelling Jin, they began making their way to the tower to turn off the Numbers and make their own broadcast. The members of the French team went to investigate the signal and found the radio tower "up by the Black Rock". Three days before the birth of her daughter Alex Rousseau changed the feed to broadcast her distress signal rather than the Numbers, hoping that someone might hear it. What is known is that the new distress signal indicates that Rousseau was trapped inside something when she made it to the tower, and that something or someone that had "killed them all" was outside. She also mentions not having the key, adding that someone named Brennan took them. She presumably later escaped. The group explores the radio tower operations roomSince that time, little is known about what happened to the tower. Rousseau says without any further explanation that it and her signal are now under the control of the Others. Rousseau claimed that "they control it now". The signal from the tower was blocked by jamming equipment controlled from the Looking Glass station. The survivors trekked up to the tower in "Through the Looking Glass" in order to get a clear signal to call for rescue. Inside, Rousseau removed the CART from the player and turned off the transmission. Naomi was then able to call her ship for rescue from outside the tower. Sometime over the next three years, the Numbers were once again made to transmit from the tower. They were heard in the cockpit of Ajira Airways Flight 316 as the plane was losing altitude over the Island.