I was thinking last night..
Since theres probably a lot of radiation on the island.. could it be that the others are people who got radiated and therefore unable to reproduce themselves?

Is that the reason why they took Alex and Walt.. and could it be that they temp. stole claire's baby to see if its a boy or a girl?

just a thought..

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Hmm...I hadn't thought of that. It seems like a possibility.

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Who says there's a lot of radiation on the island? If there was alot, then the surrounding area would be ****ed up. Because Radiation affects the cells of plants and animals just like it does humans.

Kyle

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Is behind all that concrete Kyle.. thats why the castaways dont get "sick"?
Anyway.. its just a thought..

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Nah, see, he said the only other place Sayid saw that kind of quick concrete job was in Chernobyl.... Anyways, don't they feel a hum coming for the other side? Radiation doesn't give off a hum. Plus, if Jack and them don't get sick because of the concrete wall, then why would the Others get sick?

Kyle

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But maybe the others were the original partners in the experiment...and something happend (the button wasn't pushed or they used to computer for something they weren't supposed to.) They fled the hatch and now wander around radiating nuclear waves or something. It's quite possible they would be interested in children.
What difference would it make about the gender of the children? Alex was a girl, right? And Walt and Aaronare boys...I don't understand that part.

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I can agree that radiation damage could have occured to sterilize the others but a dose large enough to cause a human to be radioactive would have destroyed all their body tissues. Complex organic compounds that make up the 30% of the body that isn't water can't be made to be radioactive and still function. In order to be radioactive but alive, they would have had to breathe in or otherwise ingest fine radioactive isotopes (which are forms of elements, not compounds) such that these isotopes became imbedded in their bodies. Depending on the dose of radioactivity, they would then succumb either to traumatic tissue damage or, from a lesser dose, to cancer caused by cell mutation induced by the radioactivity. The corpse and subsequent decayed remains would retain some level of radioactivity for presumably a long period.

I think the explanation for the others needing children for reproduction is that they simply need to introduce genetic diversity into their group to avoid in-breeding. You can get by with in-breeding in animals (to an extent) but not in humans -- genetic problems show up within the first generation.

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Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

--Lines 2-6, "The Second Coming" by Wm. Butler Yeats

But why would they want to breed in the first place? To keep the Dharma project going? Sounds real cult-ish.

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My theory is that the Others are the button pushers who went psycho and became convinced that their island was the only safe place left in the world and had to be protected against any interlopers who might destroy them. To protect what they see as normal humanity now, that is themselves, they have to perpetuate or increase their numbers while ridding themselves of all the adults who bring the danger from the rest of the world either purposefully or accidentally. The children are preferred because they are "safe," can contribute the genetic diversity to continue the generations, can be conditioned to become loyal to the group with a minimum of resistance or ability to fight back as younger adults could do.

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Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

--Lines 2-6, "The Second Coming" by Wm. Butler Yeats

So like.... The Island with Leonardo Dicaprio Meets the Matrix kind of ****? They are in the island, tracked by the island, and then there's a cult of button pushers.

Kyle

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