Black Smoke And The Turbine Explosion

This sequence of images goes towards investigating a theory that the Black Smoke was present at the crash site of Oceanic 815, and was responsible for the explosion of the engine. I will say, right from the start, I think this theory is a nice idea but I don't believe the evidence is there to back it up.

So, first we see one side of the turbine engine with some hapless survivor being warned not to wander in front of it by Locke.

In this second image we see the hapless survivor unable to heed the advice given by Locke to stay clear of the engine and is, instead, lifted bodily off the ground and sucked into it. This is, of course, some cool shit. See you later, hapless survivor.

As a point of interest the writers have confirmed that this hapless survivor is in fact Gary Troup, the author of ‘Bad Twin’, a book which featured in the ARG The Lost Experience that took place between Season 2 and 3, and was the manuscript Sawyer was reading until Jack threw it on the fire.

And, yeah, in case you didn’t know: Gary Troup is an anagram of Purgatory. He’s also in love with Cindy Chandler! Well, was. It’s unknown whether Cindy gave a shit, mind.

We now cut to the other side of the engine. So over Jack's right shoulder, on the other side of the engine, is where we have seen the hapless survivor Gary Troup be sucked into it. The theory about the Black Smoke being responsible begins in this shot also, with that piece of black debris in the air directly above the running woman's head. This, so the theory goes, is the Black Smoke in its smaller, flying form - and it's about to dive into the turbine engine. . .

As can be seen, the small, black piece of debris - or Black Smoke, if you're a believer - moves towards the turbine engine.

And so to the final shot, where the explosion has just occurred and the black piece of debris shoots upwards and away in that elongated streak that is, perhaps, what convinces a lot of people it is the Black Smoke at work.



However, for me, we have already seen the reverse side of the turbine engine, with a hapless Gary Troup wandering in front of it and getting sucked in. Surely this, more than any Black Smoke notion, is responsible for the explosion? And just as the explosion happens, the blast of hot air radiating outwards at a rapid rate would naturally cause this drifting piece of debris to be rocketed away so quickly as to turn into a streak of blackness.

Those that see a Black Smoke as either present or responsible for the event are merely hopeful. Like I said, I love the idea, but I don't think it's what's actually occurred. There’s an ‘online urban myth’ going around saying the producers have explicitly stated that the above images are the result of a computer-generated glitch. . . However, there’s no actual evidential source for when this was ever stated and appears to be just one of those pieces of misinformation that finds its way into circulation and is impossible to stop.

Even still, I don’t think the Black Smoke had anything to do with the crash of Oceanic 815 or the turbine explosion. It may do bad things, but that doesn’t mean we can pin everything on it!