I'm sorry if this particular theory has been discussed before, but I couldn't really find anything along this same line.

Alot of people have wondered why a person had to stay in the Swan and hit the button every 108 minutes, when that could have been easily been done by a computer.

What if the button was Dharma's version of a Dead Man's Trigger, or the Swan's version of Enter 77. Since we know the Flame had a self-destruct button in the event of a Hostile attack, perhaps the purpose of the button was that if the Swan's inhabitants were killed, the hatch would self destruct. We don't know what would have happened if Desmond hadn't turned the key, so maybe even more destruction would have taken place.

Plus, there was the added bonus of having the Pearl inhabitants be able to observe them.

What do y'all think? Any problems? has this been brought up before?

A lot of people have wondered why a person had to stay in the Swan and hit the button every 108 minutes, when that could have been easily been done by a computer.
Computer, hell, it could've been a mechanical timer. To go by some of the descriptions, it wouldn't even have required a timer but just a simple feedback device.

has this been brought up before?
Tons, but the volume of data has outstripped the usefulness of the search tools, which were weak to begin with. You can try searching for it. Tags were introduced only recently, but evenif they'd been there at the beginning they wouldn't've helped that much.

Robert

Computer, hell, it could've been a mechanical timer. To go by some of the descriptions, it wouldn't even have required a timer but just a simple feedback device.


Tons, but the volume of data has outstripped the usefulness of the search tools, which were weak to begin with. You can try searching for it. Tags were introduced only recently, but evenif they'd been there at the beginning they wouldn't've helped that much.

Robert

Yeah, I tried some relevant search tools, with little results.

I know the hatch itself, and the lack of some sort of mechanical timer has been brought up and discussed ad infinitum, but I wanted to put my two cents in, and didn't know if i had been beaten to the punch.