# Ill winds **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [August 2, 2002, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-winds/121946 "2002-08-02T00:25:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jezzaOZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@jezzaOZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jezzaOZ)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-winds/121946/1 "2002-08-02T00:25:44Z")
In article [http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msargasso.html](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/msargasso.html) SDSTAFF MEBuckner says > [@](#): > > Because the winds and currents are relatively calm there, sailing ships frequently found themselves becalmed–trapped not by the humble seaweed but by a lack of wind. Modern ships, of course, are no longer at the mercy of the winds that way, and jetliners are even less so. Jetliners are very much at the mercy of the winds. The average transcontinental flight can take an hour or more longer in one direction than the other due to the effect of headwinds and tailwinds. As a pecentage of the total journey time I would guess that winds affect aircraft much more than cargo-ship. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-winds/121946/2 "2002-08-02T07:09:38Z")
Good point. I guess I could weasel; modern jetliners aren’t at the mercy of the winds _that way_–that is, they may wind up in London (or New York) an hour or two later or an hour or two sooner, but they won’t be drifting helplessly for weeks on end until the fresh water supplies and those little bags of pretzels are all gone. ---
**Author:** ![jezzaOZ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@jezzaOZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jezzaOZ)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-winds/121946/3 "2002-08-02T08:03:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MEBuckner \* > \*\*Good point. I guess I could weasel; modern jetliners aren’t at the mercy of the winds _that way_–that is, they may wind up in London (or New York) an hour or two later or an hour or two sooner, but they won’t be drifting helplessly for weeks on end until the fresh water supplies and those little bags of pretzels are all gone. \*\* You may also be wrong about the jet planes being at the mercy of the Winds. If Thomas Gold is to be believed, large jet liners can be brought down, especially over the Bermuda Triangle, by gusts of gas [http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/hazard.html](http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/hazard.html) > [@](#): > > Massive sudden eruptions of gases have occurred in many locations, bursting up through the ground both from ocean floors and from dry land. They often occur repetitively in the same area, and on land create what is known as “mud volcanoes”. The amounts of expelled material accumulated in some mud volcanoes in the last million years are as large as 10 or 20 billion tons, and the estimates of the amounts of gas responsible are several times larger than that. The erupting gases are usually dominated by methane. Since methane is lighter than air, it races upwards at high speed. Many cases are known where the gas spontaneously ignited, and flames to a height of 6,000 ft have been photographed from Baku, in the active mud volcano area on the West shore of the Caspian Sea. Much higher brief flashes have been reported, up to 30,000 ft but these were too brief to be photographed. Massive flammable gas eruptions at or near times of earthquakes (before, during or after) are reported in historical and in recent times from many parts of the world. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2002, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ill-winds/121946/4 "2002-08-02T09:26:10Z")
Hmmm…there’s something in the seafloor which is sending up gas plumes to 35,000 feet–typical operating altitude for a jetliner–with these plumes being energetic enough to affect aforesaid jetliners seven miles up (or alternatively the plumes are detonating in large explosions in the stratosphere)–and this has not been deteced by anybody’s seismographs or satellites? (I’d think this is the sort of thing the U.S. Defense Department would have noticed.) And just which mysterious disappearances of jetliners over the Bermuda Triangle are we talking about, anyway?