Explore the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. Alex and Jordan debunk the urban legends and reveal the scientific truth behind the North Atlantic's most famous myth.
ALEX: Imagine you’re flying over a crystal-clear stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, the sun is shining, and suddenly, every instrument in your cockpit goes haywire before you vanish from radar forever. For decades, we’ve been told this happens in one specific patch of ocean more than anywhere else on Earth: the Bermuda Triangle.
JORDAN: Oh, the Devil’s Triangle. I remember being terrified of this as a kid, like it was some kind of portal to another dimension or a playground for aliens. Is there actually a physical 'triangle' marked out there?
ALEX: Not physically, no. It’s a loosely defined region roughly bounded by the tip of Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. But despite the spooky name, the World Wide Fund for Nature doesn't even list it as one of the world’s ten most dangerous shipping lanes.
JORDAN: Wait, so the most famous 'death trap' in the ocean isn't even in the top ten? This sounds like a classic case of the internet—or the 1970s equivalent—getting ahead of the facts.
[CHAPTER 1 - Origin]
ALEX: You hit the nail on the head. To understand why we’re obsessed with this, we have to look at the mid-20th century. The legend didn't really exist until after World War II, specifically peaking in the 1960s and 70s.
JORDAN: So people weren't disappearing there in the 1800s? What changed? Did we just start flying more planes over it?
ALEX: We definitely increased traffic, but the 'mystery' was largely manufactured by writers. A guy named Vincent Gaddis coined the phrase 'Bermuda Triangle' in a 1964 pulp magazine article called 'The Deadly Bermuda Triangle.' He claimed there was a pattern of disappearances that defied logic.
JORDAN: I’m guessing he didn't have a lot of data science to back that up. Was he just looking at old newspaper clips and connecting dots that weren't there?
ALEX: Exactly. He took a series of unrelated accidents and wrapped them in a spooky narrative. Then, in 1974, Charles Berlitz published a book titled 'The Bermuda Triangle' which became a massive bestseller. Berlitz suggested everything from the lost city of Atlantis to UFOs as the cause.
JORDAN: It’s the perfect recipe for a legend. You take a vast, beautiful ocean, add some missing ships, and sprinkle in some ancient civilizations. But what was actually happening on the water back then?
[CHAPTER 2 - Core Story]
ALEX: The core of the legend relies on a few high-profile incidents, the big one being Flight 19 in 1945. Five U.S. Navy torpedo bombers vanished during a routine training mission off the coast of Florida.
JORDAN: That does sound genuinely terrifying. Five planes just poof? How do you lose five planes at once without a trace?
ALEX: Here’s what actually happened: the flight leader’s compasses failed. He became convinced they were over the Florida Keys when they were actually over the Bahamas. He led his squadron further out into the open Atlantic until they ran out of fuel.
JORDAN: So it wasn't a magnetic vortex; it was a tragic navigation error. But didn't a rescue plane also disappear that same night?
ALEX: It did—a PBM Mariner. But that specific model of aircraft was notoriously nicknamed the 'flying gas tank' because it had a tendency to explode if anyone so much as lit a cigarette. Witnesses on a nearby ship reported seeing a fireball in the sky exactly where the plane was flying.
JORDAN: Okay, so poor design and pilot error. What about the ships? People always talk about ships found totally empty with no signs of a struggle.
ALEX: Take the Mary Celeste—it’s often lumped into the Triangle, but it was actually found near the Azores, thousands of miles away. Other 'mysterious' disappearances often occurred during recorded hurricanes or massive storms. Writers simply conveniently forgot to mention the weather in their books.
JORDAN: It sounds like the writers were more dangerous than the ocean. Did anyone actually check their work? Did a real scientist ever look at these 'disappearances' and do the math?
ALEX: Yes. A pilot and librarian named Lawrence David Kusche did. In 1975, he went back to the original sources and found that many of these 'mysteries' were completely made up. He found that some ships reported missing in the Triangle actually sank in the Pacific or the Irish Sea.
JORDAN: That’s a pretty big geographical 'oops.' So Kusche basically debunked the whole thing before the 70s were even over?
ALEX: He did, but the public loved the mystery more than the debunking. Meanwhile, Lloyd’s of London—the famous insurance market—stated that their records showed the Bermuda Triangle was no more dangerous than any other heavily traveled part of the ocean.
[CHAPTER 3 - Why It Matters]
JORDAN: If the insurance guys aren't worried, I guess I shouldn't be either. But why does this specific myth feel so permanent? We still talk about it like it’s a real thing.
ALEX: It matters because it reveals how we process information. We love a narrative that connects the dots, even when the dots are thousands of miles apart and totally unrelated. Today, scientists point to actual natural phenomena to explain the few weird things that do happen there.
JORDAN: Like what? Rogue waves? Methane bubbles?
ALEX: Exactly. The Gulf Stream is incredibly fast and turbulent—it’s like a river inside the ocean that can quickly erase any evidence of a debris field. There are also deep underwater trenches, some of the deepest in the world, where a wreck can fall and never be found by 20th-century tech.
JORDAN: So the ocean is just big and scary on its own; it doesn't need aliens to help it sink ships. But the legend has definitely impacted how we look at mapped 'danger zones.'
ALEX: It has. It’s also fueled a massive tourism industry for Bermuda and Florida. People want to sail through the 'Devil’s Triangle' just to say they survived it.
[OUTRO]
JORDAN: I’ll stick to the shallow end of the pool, thanks. But before we head back to shore, what’s the one thing to remember about the Bermuda Triangle?
ALEX: The Bermuda Triangle isn’t a mystery of the ocean, but a mystery of human storytelling—it’s a place where bad weather and human error were rebranded as the supernatural.
JORDAN: That’s Wikipodia — every story, on demand. Search your next topic at wikipodia.ai
