Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, I used to hear a lot about the Bermuda Triangle, that mysterious part of the ocean where boats and planes would disappear in unexplained ways. “Documentaries” abounded. The mere mention of the Bermuda Triangle used to give me the shivers.
By the time I had become a cynical teenager, I had stopped believing in the silly myth. I understood that a mystical, magical pie slice of the planet, one that seemed to have a burning desire to collect boats and planes, was just about as likely to exist as the tooth fairy or peace on earth. I knew it was a ridiculous superstition, but I couldn’t tell you why at the time. So I just stopped talking about it, and eventually I forgot about it entirely.
As an adult, I figured out that we humans will never be able to explain everything. That’s just a fact. So why does the word “unexplained” strike so much fear in us? News flash: we’ll never have all the answers.
Do the shenanigans in that neck of the ocean really rise to the level of unexplained phenomena? Quite likely not. Let’s unpack this.
Here’s what people don’t get about the Bermuda Triangle. There are a boatload (sorry) of boats in that area. Thanks to the Marine Traffic website (which I rely heavily upon as a bridgetender), here is what that area looks like on any given day. (The land is grey, the sea is white.)
Each of the many-colored arrows represents a vessel. That’s a lot of traffic, right? Now, consider the fact that most vessels, especially the pleasure craft, don’t even bother to have marine trackers on board. I would estimate that there are actually 4 times as many vessels out there than you see on this map. Let that sink in for a minute.
But you might be thinking that there must be a lot of boats all over the world. You’re right. There are. Here’s the world map for context.
I am always struck with the overwhelming impact we humans have on this planet when I view these images. Here’s a thought: Since whales can often hear each other when they’re as far as 10,000 miles apart, imagine the motor noises they are hearing, too. It is theorized that whales beach themselves due to radar, injury, or illness, but I’d also add this possibility: Some may just be desperately seeking some peace and quiet. But I digress.
If we only hear of these weird vessel and plane disappearances happening in the Bermuda Triangle, and in fact the entire planet is afloat in a sea of vessels, then these maps must back up the whole Bermuda Triangle theory, right?
Uh, no. Quite the opposite.
In the days before the internet, we rarely heard any news from other countries unless there was a war or a cataclysmic natural disaster. We thought we were on top of things, but we didn’t have our fingers on the global pulse to the extent that we do today. (Don’t forget, the majority of Americans didn’t know about the widespread Nazi death camps until WWII was over. People were walking around with blinders on without realizing it.)
Is it any wonder, given those conditions, that the only nautical disasters we focused on, other than the Titanic-sized ones, were the ones right on our doorstep? Lest we forget, one point of that random, yet ill-fated triangle is in South Florida. A warmer climate, bound to attract pleasure craft. So why isn’t there a similar triangle in Southern California? Because there are no conveniently placed islands that one could think of as points of a triangle.
It could be argued that we wouldn’t even have held onto news of the Titanic for long were it not for the fact that it was bound for America and so many Americans were aboard. That’s what caught our attention. Whether we care to admit it or not, we Americans tend to assign less import to things that are happening “way over there” to people of color, unless they impact our day-to-day lives.
Also, I’ve learned with age that people like to embellish stories. And the person they tell the story to will add even more to the narrative, and so on, until you’re hearing that an actual space ship descended and lifted a cargo ship out of the water, neither of them ever to be seen again. And then TV content producers seize on the attention-grabbing story and report it as if it were factual and verifiable. The human predilection for prevarication knows no bounds.
Further, the world is much more vast than people realize. There’s even a place in the Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, which is considered the most remote spot on earth. If you have the misfortune to find yourself there, you would often be closer to the astronauts in the International Space Station than you would be to any other human. There’s not a single land mass in any direction for 1000 miles. Just imagine floating into that area and discovering that your boat was taking on water. We’d never hear about it, even in this day and age, unless grandma in America is expecting you to show up for Thanksgiving, and you don’t.
So, assuming that boats are going down all over the world at an equal rate, more or less, and then subtracting the ones that go down in remote or less developed areas of the world, it’s understandable that the Bermuda Triangle actually seemed like a thing before the internet age. Now we hear about boats going down globally, so the ones in the Bermuda Triangle, while still tragic, don’t seem that remarkable anymore. The sea is a dangerous place. And if you add planes into the equation, in modern times you’re inundated with global tragedies that make the ones that occur in the Bermuda Triangle seem par for the course.
So what became of the Bermuda Triangle? I would argue that it was killed by the internet. Lots of conspiracy theories have been killed that way. (Have you noticed that we don’t see nearly as many photos of UFOs now that everyone has a camera on their phone? What are the odds of that?)
Unfortunately, the internet is also allowing equally bizarre conspiracy theories to take their places. Online, everyone has a voice. Even the crackpots.
Please think critically, dear reader.
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