Locke, Desmond, blastdoor map questions

How come once Desmond returned, Locke never asked Desmond to show him how to fake a lockdown so he could get another look at the blastdoor map? Or do you all think he did and we just haven't seen that episode yet? (This was after Desmond took off from the Swan hatch but before he came back, right?)

but he did didnt he becasue desmond faked a lockdown to get mr eko out so they could stop pushing the button...........plus Locke at that point had lost his faith so probably didnt care

You're right that Locke had lost faith at that point and probably didn't care. Good point.

What does the lockdown do, exactly? Does it buy time and put off having to push the button or something else? I've never understood that.

i'm not sure at all, i know when they had the first lockdown the food drop arrived, that was when Lockes leg got caught under the door.......... so thats what i presumed it was for... i dont think we were actually ever told what they were for. i wonder if its in that episode when desmond initiated it, if he explained it, we know kelvin and radzinsky before him had used it to paint the map on the blast door, but if it did anything specifically i dont no

just pure speculation here... maybe it was to keep out the hostiles, what if the dharma people feared a hostile attack, and the lockdown was to keep people in and safe from the hostiles so they could still push the button

OMG! I bet you're right! The lockdown was to keep the hostiles out. Just like the scene at Ben's school where they teacher drills the children on what to do during a hostile attack.

[quote=Michelle;33355]i'm not sure at all, i know when they had the first lockdown the food drop arrived, that was when Lockes leg got caught under the door.......... so thats what i presumed it was for...[snip]

Do you really think that lockdown initiates a food drop? I just assumed that Mikhail initiated the food drop because later on we learn in the Enter 77 that by playing chess with the computer at the Flame station and entering certain numbers you can call for a food drop. Maybe there is more than one way to get a food drop? They MUST have planned for the situation where all the good chess players in the Dharma Initiative are dead? Especially with all the talk of the "sickness"...

i don't know if it is for the food drop, i just remember that the food drop coinsided with the original lockdown, and so that was why i originall put the two together,

although a protective mechanism to keep the hostiles out seems like the most logical answer, except for one thing, the first lockedown seemed to happen out of the blue, and when desmond overrid it to force a lockdown, didnt he do it by shorting the circuit and so there doesnt seem to be anyway that the people in the hatch can just initate a lockdown without shorting out the circuit so it couldnt have been to protect the people in the hatch could it??

WAIT... stop the presses... I just had a thought here. Why a food drop anyway.. didn't Ben's father say that he had to make a supply delivery to the Swan the day Ben gassed him in the VW vanigan. Or was it the arrow. Did the inhabitants of the Swan think they were the only one on the isalnd? or was the process switched to make drops AFTER the purge. I must go back and look at 'The Man behind the Curtain' again. Does anyone know what Uncle Rico said he and Ben were going to do that day?

ROGER: Morning. OK, wait. Put it right, right down there. What's your problem now? Sure you're usually Chatty Cathy in the morning.

BEN: It's my birthday. I dunno why I keep fooling myself into thinking that one of these years you're actually gonna remember.

ROGER: Well I'll tell you what. All we gotta do this morning is run this stuff out to the Pearl station. Why don't we go up to the mesa, drink some beers. Have some, I dunno, father and son time.

BEN: I'd like that.

ROGER: OK.

[Roger drives the van up to the mesa]

ok, thanks for clearing that up. so where do the pallet drops come from anyway. Are they launched from another part of the island. or, like the youtube clip that ChickenPotPie has pointed us too, is it dropped from a plane and through an opening when 108 hits.