I have a question about the Bermuda Triangle....

[battleknight24]

... How did the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle become a mystery at all?


Peace,

[ForrestGump]

1. A big step, maybe THE defining step,

was that Charles Berlitz wrote a book about it.

I used to buy in to that when I was a kid but then I read less invigorating works that debunked the myth...Berlitz was a charlatan. Weird stuff may well happen inside the Triangle (shoot, I've lived in it and encountered profoundly weird things, albeit all aspects of human behavior), but it is not what he claimed it was.

Ditto his work on Atlantis.

[battleknight24]

2. From what I heard...

... if you examine that large an oceanic area ANYWHERE on earth, there will be a similar number of 'mysterious' dissapearances, of ships, boats, etc.

Come to think of it, aren't there a lot of storms in various parts of the "Bermuda Triangle"? That would explain a lot, if not everything.


Peace,

[ForrestGump]

7. it's true

And that area includes a big chunk of some of the most traveled sealanes in the world. It's the stuff like purported magnetic anomalies (sure, they happen) and weirder things like the sea opening up (also happens, as when water become supersaturated with methane or other gases...it's speculated that a number of ships may have been lost this way, and ditto freak waves) that is more interesting than the sheer numbers.

Even though I've a science background I'm not a 'skeptic' of the kind in vogue now -- as close-minded and fundamentalist as gullible True Believers in that they believe, absolutely, in things always having answers rational within our current understanding and make the 'facts' conform to their close-minded paradigms -- but I do believe that, at the very least, the number of losses within the Bermuda Triangle is unremarkable. I also beleive that most or all of the more off-the-wall seemingly paranormal or extraterrestrial incidents reported likely have prosaic explanations, even if some are manifestations of relatively rare (or, at least, rarely-reported) phenomena.

There remain things out there beyond our current explaining...but if you were going to pick your paranormal battles, championing the Bermuda Triangle would be a bad bet. Charles Berlitz made it up as a cynical exercise in selling books.

[leftofthedial]

3. it's a mystery to me

coincidence?

or something more?

[battleknight24]

4. What's a coincidence?

???

[leftofthedial]

8. it may NOT be a mere coincidence

but it is both a mystery in your question

AND

a mystery to me.


plus, "Coincidence? Or something more?" is the question repeatedly asked by Erich von Daniken in his crypto-history phenomenology books that helped to popularize the Bermuda Triangle and many other staples of the psuedo-science fringe.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

5. READ THE BOOK! n/t

[x-g.o.p.er]

6. It's actually an isocoles triangle...

where all others are right triangles.

Mystery solved.