The Bermuda Triangle: Reasoning of the Unknown

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The Bermuda Triangle Reasoning of the Unknown

• David Deese

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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.

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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 Devils Triangle

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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
  Berlitzs 1974 bestseller The Bermuda Triangle.

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Who the heck started this?!

• 1492 Columbuss compass went haywire and its
  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.

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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.

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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.

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Common Ailments of the Triangle

• Strange Magnetic Fields
• Oceanic Flatulence
• Atlantis
• Sporadic Interdimensional Travel
• Time Warps
• Alien Abduction
• What have you heard?

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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, its doubtful theyll 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 arent widely circulated to begin with.

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The fairest thing to do...

• Correlation Investigate past incidents 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 worlds
  oceans to see if this areas is significantly
  higher than that of other areas.

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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.

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What they dont 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 its 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.)

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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 didnt 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.