Lost: A Timeline (spoilers)

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s already a website doing this, but I thought it might be useful to figure out when everything’s happening or has happened in the show. Perhaps a pattern will emerge.

I was inspired to create this thread by a mention of the Florida Hurricanes in last week’s episode, “Numbers.” This is the first reference I’ve seen that definitively ties the show down to a particular moment in time. Consider:

  • “Florida hurricanes,” plural. This tells us the crash happened in a year when more than one hurricane struck Florida.

  • In Hurley’s census episode, Boone made reference to the Patriot Act. This means the show is set in 2002 or later; the only year since then that Florida has had multiple hurricanes is last year, 2004. Specifically, September of last year.

  • Jack and his father have a saying they use, “that’s why the Red Sox will never win the World Series.” If the Sox had won the series when the plane crashed, surely one of the characters would have mentioned it in response to this phrase. Since no one has, this means the show takes place before October of last year.

So, it seems reasonable to assume the plane crashed in late September 2004, around the time the show itself premiered on TV. Actually, we don’t need to guess at this one, because the LOST trading cards name the date: September 22, 2004. I will refer to this day hereinafter as “Crash.”

Okay, so here’s what we know (by which I mean, what I remember offhand):

Crash - 1 week? (September 15, 2004): Walt’s mother dies.

Crash + 1 month (late October 2004): The “present day” as of the episode “Numbers.”

Crash - 8 months (January 2004): Claire gets pregnant.

Crash - 1 year (~September 2003): Hurley wins a $156 million jackpot in the lottery.

Crash - 4 years (~September 2000): Sam Toomey kills himself.

Crash - 4 years (~September 2000): Locke is crippled in an unknown accident.

Crash - 16 years (1988): Danielle Rousseau changes the outgoing transmission.

Crash - 16 years and change (~1988): Danielle Rouusseau’s vessel intercepts the other transmission and changes course for the island.

Crash - 16 years and change (~1988): Sam Toomey receives the same radio transmission Rousseau’s party hears.

Crash - 28 years (1976): Sawyer (not his real name) writes his letter to the man who destroyed his family.

Obviously this needs a lot of work. Some help? I’ll create a spreadsheet and collect all the responses.

Do we know how old Walt is? That’s a date.

I’m not sure we’ve been given concrete enough numbers to do this with any certainty. For example, we know that Sun and Jin have been married for at least a year, but that’s only based on the growth of the dog.

Ahh, good one!

Crash - 10 years (1994): Walt is born.

About how long before the crash did Jack’s father die? Have they said for sure.
It couldn’t have been more than a week or two because he ran into Sawyer before he died.

So Crash - 1 to 2 weeks Jack’s Dad dies.