"Devil's Triangle" Bermuda Incident

Author: Hui Jiaming

Editor: Yuki

Bermuda is a small island in the Atlantic Ocean with a population of less than 100,000 and is 10,000 kilometers away from Beijing. remote. Logically speaking, this place has nothing to do with our lives. However, when it comes to the name of Bermuda, there are probably not many young people today who don’t know it.

In the extracurricular books we have read since childhood, the concept of the "Bermuda Devil Triangle" appears quite frequently. The so-called Devil's Triangle generally refers to the triangular area formed by Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico. According to legend, supernatural incidents occur frequently in this area, and whether it is an airplane or a ship, it will be very dangerous as soon as it enters.

(Illustration of the Bermuda Devil Triangle. Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Some people believe that there is a time and space tunnel in the Bermuda Devil Triangle, which will transport the aircraft to a strange world, and the passengers will also Just like that, the world disappeared. Some people even connect the Devil's Triangle with the myth of Atlantis or aliens, and speculate that the missing people were captured by mysterious forces.

These supernatural stories are indeed very attractive and could be made into several science fiction blockbusters. However, please don’t take it seriously. In reality, Bermuda is not a scary forbidden land, nor does it have the time and space tunnel you yearn for. Most of the stories about it are made up and distorted facts. The so-called Devil's Triangle is not essentially a natural phenomenon, but a pop culture phenomenon created by humans themselves.

(In reality, Bermuda is a peaceful land and a famous tourist destination.

Image source: (WT-en) Legrospaum?|Wikimedia Commons)

Devil Bermuda, how scary is it?

The supernatural events in the Devil's Triangle in Bermuda sound mysterious, but they actually fall into two categories: either a ship crash or a missing flight. However, if you want to ask how many ships and planes the Devil's Triangle has eaten, relevant treatises cannot provide precise figures. Some folk enthusiasts have counted that there have been more than 900 traffic accidents in this area in the past 200 years, but this number is likely to be biased [1]. In fact, the folk experts who admire the "Devil's Triangle" have never thought of using shocking statistics to attract attention, but rely on confusing individual case stories.

Among shipwreck stories, the classic cases that are most often used to prove the horror of the Devil’s Triangle are the case of missing warships and ghost ships (ships that drift like ghosts on the sea without human pilots). Definitely the Cyclops and Carroll A. Deering. The Cyclops is a naval transport ship with more than 300 people on board and a displacement of nearly 20,000 tons. In March 1918, it set out with a load of ore, but suddenly disappeared while passing through the Devil's Triangle, and even the ship and its crew disappeared without a trace [2] . It is really surprising that a giant steel ship with powerful equipment and a tonnage equivalent to a light aircraft carrier would disappear inexplicably without even leaving a trace.

(Old image of the Cyclops transport ship. Image source: Photograph was taken by the New York Navy Yard｜Wikimedia Commons)

In contrast, the ghost ship Carolyn The experience was described as even more bizarre. This multi-masted sailing ship was built in 1919 and was usually responsible for hauling cargo in the waters near Bermuda. However, just two years after it was launched, the ship disappeared. Until 1921, it was discovered on the coast of North Carolina, USA. The hull was intact, but there was no one on board [3].

Similarly, the case of missing military planes is also widely circulated. In December 1945, five bombers were out training and their signal disappeared in the waters near Bermuda. Immediately afterwards, the Navy sent a seaplane to search and rescue, but the search and rescue plane also disappeared shortly afterwards [4] . Altogether, 6 aircraft and 27 pilots were missing on this day.

(Old image of the missing Navy bomber. Image source: Lt. Comdr. Horace Bristol｜Wikimedia Commons)

In addition to these classic cases, there are many other supernatural stories about the Bermuda Triangle. There are few, but the story structure is similar, and most of them are about cases where a certain type of transportation disappeared for no reason after arriving in the area. At first glance, Bermuda seems to be really evil, and it has instilled this idea in people: The Bermuda Triangle is very dangerous. The disappearance of transportation vehicles is contrary to common sense in life and cannot be explained by science. Instead, it can only introduce time and space tunnels or aliens. concept can make sense? But in fact, this concept is wrong from beginning to end, because Bermuda is not dangerous. The traffic accidents there can be explained scientifically, and it is completely unfounded to be linked to space-time tunnels or UFOs. .

Among the most dangerous sea areas in the world, Bermuda is not even ranked in the top ten?

First of all, what we can confirm is that most of the traffic accident cases related to the Devil's Triangle do exist, and a small number of them are fabricated out of thin air. The news newspapers at the time can also prove this. However, there are too many exaggerated elements, and some important details are deliberately omitted.

Objectively speaking, the crash of warships and aircraft is a regrettable but also very common thing. Just for the past two years, our South Asian neighbors have crashed a military aircraft almost every month. There have been more than 30 naval accidents in the past ten years, and there are endless news about warship and submarine crashes around the world. From the early 19th century to the first half of the 20th century, when GPS had not yet been born, computers were not widely used, airplanes still used propellers, and weather forecasts were mostly based on guesswork, it was not at all unbelievable that planes and ships crashed in the Bermuda Triangle. . What's more, the World Wildlife Fund has compiled a ranking of places with high incidence of shipping accidents in the world. The areas most prone to accidents are the Sea of ??Japan, the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and other places, and Bermuda is not even ranked in the top ten [5]! Moreover, when a ship or plane crashes in the vast sea, searching for its wreckage is literally like "looking for a needle in a haystack", so it is difficult for people to find its traces, and it is easy to form the illusion that it "missed for no reason and left no traces."

As for the so-called ghost ship, it is not surprising at all. According to the Asahi Shimbun, more than 100 ghost ships drifted off the coast of Japan in 2017 alone. The owners of these ships may have died in a shipwreck, with their bodies washed away by the waves. It is also possible that it was originally parked at the pier and left unattended, but then the cable broke and it was washed into the sea. This is probably how some of the ghost ships in the Bermuda Triangle appeared. In addition, like the Carolidilin mentioned earlier, according to witnesses at the time, it should have been attacked by pirates and the crew escaped or were killed, so it was found empty.

In addition, a pilot named Larry Kusche (who is also a master of library science) wrote a book based on his own driving experience and documentary records. To reveal the truth about Bermuda[6]. He discovered that in the past supernatural stories about ship and plane crashes, one important detail had been omitted? The weather.

(Hurricane in the waters near Bermuda. Image source: Image by Jesse Allen, based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA-GSFC ｜Wikimedia Commons)

Frequent hurricanes in the waters near Bermuda The occurrence of hurricanes or thunderstorms is a great threat to maritime traffic. Like the Cyclops, its accident report has mentioned that the ship probably sank in a storm with a speed of 50-70 kilometers per hour. In addition, bad weather occurred on the same day as many of the disappearances of ships and flights in the area. However, loyal fans who are keen on the Devil's Triangle deliberately did not mention the weather in order to increase the mysterious nature of the event. After all, if the disappearances were simply the result of bad weather, it probably wouldn't attract much attention.

A carnival of pop culture

In general, the traffic accident in the sea near Bermuda is not a supernatural event and can be explained by science. The so-called Bermuda Devil Triangle is not a natural phenomenon, let alone an academic achievement discovered by scientists.

But if you want to ask whether the Bermuda Devil Triangle exists? Then we should answer: It does exist? Not in nature, but as a fictional cultural phenomenon in human books, TV, Internet and minds.

(The Bermuda Devil Triangle exists as a fictional cultural phenomenon. Image source: Wallpaper Abyss)

The concept of the Bermuda Devil Triangle has been a cultural product since its inception. Its proposer, Vincent Gaddis, is not a scientific researcher as everyone imagines, but a writer. In 1964, he wrote an article called "The Bermuda Triangle of Death" and published it in Argosy magazine. The key is that this magazine is actually a pop culture magazine, and most of the content published on it is fictional novels, which is equivalent to the "Story Club" that we Chinese are familiar with. The "Big Ship" magazine was called "Golden Ship" before it was renamed. It was positioned as a children's literature magazine, equivalent to the "Fairy Tale King" we read when we were children.

Imagine if someone published an article in "Story Club" or "Fairy Tale King" and talked about the frequent supernatural events in a certain place. Do you think this is fiction or a real event?

After working on it for a long time, I found that the Bermuda Triangle was originally a literary creation and had nothing to do with natural science research. However, the concept of the Bermuda Triangle does attract people's attention because this area of ????the sea was a hotspot in the last century. The west is close to the famous tourist resort of Florida, the south is Cuba, the front line of the Cold War, and the center has important Atlantic trade routes. In terms of time, it just happened to catch up with the "UFO craze" in the 1960s and 1970s. After hitting four hot spots in one breath, it’s hard to think whether the Bermuda Triangle is popular or not.

Suddenly, various magazines, TV shows, B-level movies, cultural shirts and other peripheral cultural products about the Bermuda Triangle spewed out [7]. The famous director Spielberg was inspired and even made a science fiction blockbuster "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Later, the theory of the Bermuda Triangle was introduced to China and became the "collective memory" of many people born in the 80s and 90s.

(The Bermuda Triangle once became a hot spot in the resort town of Florida. Image source: Daniel Christensen｜Wikimedia Commons)

From this point of view, although the Bermuda Triangle is fictional, it is indeed It has added a lot of exciting content to people's cultural life, and even inspired many young people around us to become interested in scientific research. But no matter what, we should give Bermuda a true face, not an eye-catching shadow.

Author's business card

Typesetting: Ningyin

Source of title picture: Wallpaper Abyss

References:

[1]/news/2002/12/bermuda-triangle-mystery-disappearance/

[5]/news/science-environment-22806362

[6]Kusche, Lawrence David (1975). The Bermuda Triangle mystery: solved. London: New English Library.

[7]Brett Neilsen. Deterritorializing the Bermuda Triangle: Popular Geography and the Myths of Globalization. Space and Culture, 2000.< /p>