Warning, spoilers below!
In LOST, the character of Desmond is repeatably described as "special" and is shown to have various abilities, most notably a very high resistance to electromagnetism.
We first see this ability some time after he activated a fail-safe and destroyed the Swan.
What happened then?
- Was he, unbeknownst to himself, special before the act, allowing him to survive the station's destruction?
- Did he gain his abilities by being bathed in the Anomaly's energies during its destruction?
- Did he have some powers (such as electromagnetic resistance) before the event but gained additional abilities (such as his time-related ones) from it?
- Or did something else happen?