With the new season of ABC’s hit show “LOST” soon to begin, the elusive meaning of those lottery numbers of Hurley’s has finally been revealed.

If you were one of the many fan’s who played this summer’s alternate-reality game “The Lost Experience” then you have already learned the secret to Hurley’s numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42) and revelations about the Dharma Initiative and the Hanso Foundation.

The answers can now be had in a video detailing the elaborate backstory to the show, which has been posted in its entirety on YouTube:

Those numbers, that keep cropping up in the most unlikely scenarios, represent the Valenzetti Equation, a mathematical formula dealing with the timetable and probability of humanity’s extinction. The purpose for the show’s Dharma Initiative was an effort by the mysterious Hanso Foundation to either ward off or at least curtail that inevitability. When Dharma failed, Hanso’s acting leader, Thomas Mittelwerk, set in motion a plan to release a virus that would kill 30 percent of the world’s population.

Full details of the game’s various threads can be found on The Lost Experience Blog.

You can find a full accounting of the numbers story on TVGuide.com.

Submitted by: Cougar (SoSF Staff Reporter)