Have these books and tv shows been a part of your life for 40 years? Its ingrained in mine, just like the JFK conspiracy, Woodstock, and Watergate. Cultural events we experienced in childhood stay with us forever.
The Bermuda Triangle theory remained popular well over ten years. It still comes up when ships or planes disappear in that area. It’s a popular theory that sells books nothing more. No science supports it.
When I was ten years old, I was credulous about things like the Bermuda Triangle or the nutball theories of Erich von Däniken. (I think Leonard Nimoy’s In Search of was on TV at the time.) But then I grew up.
Kusche’s research was top notch, and among other things he found:
Many wrecks claimed by BT promoting authors often were’t in the Bermuda Triangle when the went missing.
They at times outright invented incidents, or reported them without doing research (several of the ships never even existed or never disappeared).
Kusche once described one BT author as ‘If he told me the color of the boat was red I’d have to triple check that’.
Along with a lot of other woowoo silliness in the 70’s, the Bermuda Triangle was a big thing. It eventually faded because a lot of the facts didn’t hold together (Kuche’s book helped, along with a NOVA special debunking a lot of the nonsense). Plus a lot of folks just got tired of it: You have to realize that just about ever 70’s action or mystery program had a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ episode. This would repeat in the 90’s with Area 51 nonsense.
Still, there was never anything to it. A hint: When you’re stuff is being debunked on ‘Beckman’s World’ it is time to to hang it up.
I guess I wasn’t clear in the OP. I mentioned the Bermuda Triangle was considered by many to be a myth. I should have been clear that I consider it a myth too. This ship might get added to the list if wreckage isn’t found. Someone will probably write a new Bermuda Triangle book. The myth will live on. It will probably be retold long after we are all gone.
Another lost ship added to the Triangle list doesn’t make it true. Sure, its opportunistic to use a tragedy like this. Hollywood makes movies about tragedies all the time. This is no different. No one wants to see a ship lost at sea. No one wants to see any real life tragedy. But somebody will write a screenplay when it happens.
The way it was worded sounded like you were saying the opposite:
Sorry for any confusion. I forget sometimes many here weren’t around for the 70’s. Mr. Miskatonic is one that like me remembers all the Bermuda Triangle references. A big part of popular culture. Few took it seriously. Its Bigfoot and Area 51. total bullshit.
But the myth itself like any urban myth has a life of its own.
There is no mystery, this phenomenon is the result of people with low ethical standards realizing that they could make money out of peddling nonsense to uncritical audiences.
I was around for them, and I remember all the Bermuda Triangle hoopla. I was a credulous preteen boy and was fascinated with ghosts, UFOs, psychics and all that nonsense. There were books and TV shows about the BT, and UFOs (remember Project Blue Book?), and Uri Geller until he was debunked on Johnny Carson. Great stories that were a lot of fun, until I learned about Occam’s Razor.
But in your OP you sounded like a True Believer.
It’s odd that all the hype about the Bermuda triangle went away about the same time as hype over the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot.
Spoiler alert!
It’s not.
[QUOTE=aceplace57]
I don’t know if the Bermuda Triangle is true or not.
[/quote]
Wow, another conversion!
The next time a doubter remarks on how the Great Minds of the Dope never convince anyone to abandon woo, just point them to this thread!
The El Faro will eventually be discovered anchored off the same island where that missing Malaysian plane was diverted, wait and see.
I was interested in the Bermuda Triangle as a kid at the same time you were. You mention reading lots of books. Did you read this one:
The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved (1975). Lawrence David Kusche (ISBN 0-87975-971-2)
Reading that one is when I utterly lost interest. You should have, too.
Bullshit.
Such complete and utter nonsense.
Promoting a bogus hypothesis by deliberately mistating facts to credulous and impressionable people is not a “fun and harmless diversion”; it is fraud that feeds conspiranoia and convinces impressionable children and gullible adults that “sciece can’t explain everything.” In a nation in which one of the major candidates for the office of chief executive and head of state literally believes the Earth was created six thousand years ago, where 37% of polled voters think that global climate change is untrue, 1 out of 5 belive that childhood vaccination causes autism, and more than a quarter believe that Saddam Hussain was responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (and more than half still believe that Iraq was attempting to produce nuclear weapons despite the results coming out of the Plame affair and the subsequent lack of any evidence whatsoever), the last thing we need is to be spreading more utterly bogus misinformation about supposed “inexplicable happenings” that are actually the result of the natural hazards of marine travel and failure to prepare for reasonable contingencies.
Stranger
We can always rely on you to make a story of something ridiculous that has been debunked decades ago.
All that can be described in two words, epistemic vandalism; while science and reason try to illuminate our path, those things not just stand on the way, they piss on the flame too.
Bermuda Triangle, makes people disappear…
I suspect it may have had something to do with how the Baby Boomer generation was aging and started to have other things to worry about.
Kusche and NOVA kinda swatted the myth and people got sick of seeing it on Wonder Woman and Hardy Boys.
Bigfoot faded because it got put into the same category as Elvis sightings. Nobody ever specifcally swatted the Bigfoot myths like the Bermuda Triangle, but then again Bigfoot myth wasn;t hampering tourism. People also got sick of it because seeing him fight the Six Million Dollar man is kind shark-jumpy.
Loch Ness was swatted because the people searching for it started to get diminishing returns. There was an expose of the various underwater photos in the Sketical Inquirer but that was much later.
Six? WOW. That’s amazing!!! That’s like, almost as many as in the Harry Potter series. :dubious: