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Midges. We have Bees and Mosquitoes why not Midges.

Sam G, I made a note to myself to find the site I read yesterday about spreading infections via insects, and lo and behold you're 2 steps ahead of me.

It was WWII stories in Japan, I believe?

It looks like they came from underground. Are they travelling from the Mosquito Coast to the part of the island the lostaways are on, via the tunnels?

If a sceene is deleated is the info therein part of our knowledge base?
If so the midges might be a source of food for the birds we never see that laid the French Ladys egg

Interesting, but I don't suppose they would survive a dynamite blast, nor make sounds like a printer as they fly through the jungle.

And to answer your question - no, if a scene is deleted, it is not part of the show's "cannon."

Interesting, but I don't suppose they would survive a dynamite blast, nor make sounds like a printer as they fly through the jungle.

And to answer your question - no, if a scene is deleted, it is not part of the show's "cannon."

The Black Cloud was before the dynamite blast. It's what made them start running to begin with, it tipped them off that something was wrong. Then the trees started to blow up.

If it was midges, the vibration of what was happening underground could have broken the log or what ever they had been breeding in.

The Noise? I'll have to listen to it.

i think that after Jack tossed the dynamite into the hole, (and after it detonated) we saw that cloud once again, coming out of the hole, and then moving away

Sam: I still think the black cloud on Lost is a swarm of sentient nanites. But your post has me thinking (always dangerous). What if the swarm was originally programmed to mimic the behavior of insects, midges, and other animals that swarm? I'm still stuck on the scene where charlie cracked the hive of bees, which strikes me as foreshadowing of some kind.

waltisfuture: Your comment about birds spreading disease has me thinking, as well. What if the black cloud is the literally the source of the "sickness"? That is, it's not something the cloud carries, but rather the particles themselves?

I'm going through wordpads and cleaning up today.* Man I get scattered and forget to go back and post the stuff I find.

This is from the Tib thread:

http://www.ww2pacific.com/unit731.html
Japanese Unit 731

Biological Warfare Unit
Planned Bacterial Attack on the United States.
Proposals included use of these weapons against the United States. They proposed using balloon bombs to carry disease to America and they had a plan in the summer of 1945 to use kamikaze pilots to dump plague infected fleas on San Diego.

Some Japanese generals proposed loading the balloons with weapons of biological warfare, to create epidemics of plague or anthrax in the United States. Other army units wanted to send cattle plague virus to wipe out the American livestock industry or grain smut to wipe out the crops. As it happened, 9000 each carried four incendiary and one antipersonnel bomb across the Pacific on the jet stream to create forest fires and terror from Oregon to Michigan.

As the end of the war approached in 1945, Unit 731 embarked on its wildest scheme; codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, the plan was to use kamikaze pilots to infest California with the plague.

Toshimi Mizobuchi, who was an instructor for new recruits in Unit 731, said the idea was to use 20 of the 500 new troops who arrived in Harbin in July 1945. A submarine was to take a few of them to the seas off Southern California, and then they were to fly in a plane carried on board the submarine and contaminate San Diego with plague-infected fleas. The target date was to be Sept. 22, 1945. As it happened, the fleet of submarine seaplane carriers that assembled was assigned to launch torpedoes at the locks in the Panama canal, but that was changed to attack the US fleet at Ulith just as the war ended.

There are also the sand fleas on the island.
i think that after Jack tossed the dynamite into the hole, (and after it detonated) we saw that cloud once again, coming out of the hole, and then moving away

There is another black cloud after the dynamite is thrown into the hole. The cloud does not come out of the hole but somewhere behind it. The cloud is up and out before the sound of the deep explosion reaches us. Reacting to the vibration in the earth where they are nesting? The noise they make sounds very much like insects.

http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/Insects/True%20Katydid/141sl1.wav
http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/Insects/True%20Katydid/11katydid.wav
This is a katydid much larger but has the same sort of sound

Large numbers of adult midges emerge at sundown, gather in swarms and produce a humming sound that can be heard several feet away

Because of the sensitivity of the swarming males to sound you can often see erratic changes in the swarm pattern in response to sounds such as a handclap or even spoken word.

I've been trying to find a sound file for midges or black flies and haven't come up with one yet

I was looking at the column of smoke with this thread in mind, and the top of the smoke looks like a swarm, but the bottom looks like a tunnel of smoke. Maybe we are looking at both at the same time?

I was looking at the column of smoke with this thread in mind, and the top of the smoke looks like a swarm, but the bottom looks like a tunnel of smoke.* Maybe we are looking at both at the same time?

It seems to dissapate too fast to be smoke. Nothing seems to be left behind.

http://www.lochness.co.uk/exhibition/piranha-midge.html
OK this one made me laugh. Radioactive Midges that's why Locke had a geiger counter.
Still looking for a sound file.
http://www.brainsluice.com/miscellanea/ickle/archive/midges.html Midges don't like smoke.

I totally think you have found something BIG here. This is the best explanation I have seen for the black cloud. And I did think it sounded like bugs when I heard it.

Sigh...so 5% of the monster is midges?

Sttttttttttttttttrrrrrrrrrretttcch* :P

Admittedly, the katydid sound is quite compelling. However, you can hear it the sound very loudly from the beach in the Pilot

Just finished reading Michael Crichton's book "Prey".
I think it's a must for Lost fans. Read all about swarms behaviour, nano-tech, and imitation. Great book

I was watching the extras on the DVD. They were filming footage for the DVD during the pilot episode. Here's Dominic with a katydid. They make noise like the smoke. Except they are pretty big.
http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/Insects/True%20Katydid/141sl1.wav