The Bermuda Triangle: Reasoning of the Unknown

1. The Bermuda Triangle: Reasoning of the Unknown David Deese

2. What *is* the Bermuda Triangle? • The vast three-sided segment of the Atlantic Ocean bordered by Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. • Spans an area of around 500,000 square miles, but some estimates are up to three times larger.

3. What *is* the Bermuda Triangle? • Reports of strange occurrences have been recorded as early as the days of Columbus. • Sometimes the Coast Guard answers more than 5,000 distress calls within the Triangle per year. • Also Known As: “The Devil’s Triangle”

4. What *is* the Bermuda Triangle? • First dubbed “The Bermuda Triangle” by writer V. Gaddis in a 1964 issue of Argosy, a magazine devoted to fiction. • Public interest in the Bermuda Triangle increased exponentially with the publication of Charles Berlitz’s 1974 bestseller The Bermuda Triangle.

5. Who the heck started this?! • 1492 – Columbus’s compass went haywire and it’s reported that he and his crew saw “weird lights” in the sky. • 1892 – The Mary Celeste is discovered abandoned on the high seas about 400 miles off its intended course from New York to Genoa. There was no sign of its crew of ten or what happened to them.

6. Why do we still believe this? • In a study of related material, Larry Kushe found that few people do any investigation into the mystery whatsoever. They simply passed on the speculations of their predecessors as if they were passing on the mantle of truth. (AKA – Word of Mouth & Tell A Friend) • In short, the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery by a kind of communal reinforcement among uncritical authors and a willing mass media to uncritically pass on the speculation that something mysterious is going on in the Atlantic.

7. Who the heck started this?!-The *REAL* Humdinger- • December 5, 1945 – “Flight 19” • Five Navy planes vanished without a trace on a training mission during a severe storm. A rescue plane was dispatched to find them and it too never returned. (27 men in all) • An official Navy report of the incident insinuated that the planes disappeared... “as if they had flown to Mars.”

8. Common Ailments of the Triangle • Strange Magnetic Fields • Oceanic Flatulence • Atlantis • Sporadic Interdimensional Travel • Time Warps • Alien Abduction • What have *you* heard?

9. Why do we still believe this? • The current truth is so widely and easily circulated and believed that the only way to eliminate it would be for the Navy to make an announcement to the Nation about it, but as that costs lots of money, it’s doubtful they’ll do it even *if* they had the inclination to do so. • Many people have been exposed to the myth of the Bermuda Triangle before they learn the facts about the incidents in the Bermuda Triangle, which aren’t widely circulated to begin with.

10. The fairest thing to do... • Correlation – Investigate pastincidents within the Bermuda Triangle, searching for authentic/government-issued reports. • Statistics – Construct a timeline of incidents that occurred and compare this distribution with that of other treacherous areas of the world’s oceans to see if this area’s is significantly higher than that of other areas.

11. The fairest thing to do... • Conduct a study – Select a sizable number of ships (to be determined by researchers) that will be passing through the Bermuda Triangle in a single year (or multiple years) and survey the Captain and some of the crew about the voyage across the Triangle.

12. What they *don’t* tell you... • “Flight 19”: Nothing but the facts... • “The rescue plane dispatched never returned.” – Only because it blew up 23 seconds after takeoff. And this particular design, the Mariner, was well known for it’s faulty gas tanks. • “No wreckage was ever found” – The planes were possibly so far out in the Atlantic that they passed the continental shelf; which would mean the planes sank into several thousand feet of water. (The deepest point in the Atlantic, at 30,100 feet deep, is also located in the Puerto Rico Trench *within* the Bermuda Triangle.)

13. The Major holes we overlook... • Most of the associated incidents can be explained by rational means. • Most of these same incidents blamed on the Bermuda Triangle didn’t occur anywhere *near* the Triangle. (The Mary Celeste was discovered off the coast of Portugal.) • Some incidents recorded as far away as the Pacific are blamed on the Bermuda Triangle without reason. • The facts do not support the legend; there is no mystery to be solved and nothing that needs explaining. The number of wrecks in this area is not extraordinary given its size, location, and the amount of traffic it receives.