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This passage was adapted from Bermuda (or "Devil's")
Triangle by Robert Todd Carroll. <http://skepdic.com/ bermuda.php> Retrieved February
10, 2004.
The Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle (or the Devil's Triangle) is an area in
the Atlantic Ocean located between Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. The size of the triangle
varies from 500,000 square miles to three times that size, depending on the imagination of
the author. Legend has it that many people, ships and planes have mysteriously vanished in
this area. How many have mysteriously disappeared depends on who is doing the locating and
the counting. Even so, estimates range from about 200 to about 1,000 incidents in the past
500 years.
Many theories have been given to explain
the extraordinary mystery of these missing ships and planes. Evil
extraterrestrials, residue crystals from Atlantis, evil humans with
anti-gravity devices or other weird technologies, and vile vortices
from the fourth dimension are favorites among fantasy writers. Strange
magnetic fields and oceanic flatulence (methane gas from the bottom
of the ocean) are favorites among the technically-minded. Weather
(thunderstorms, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, high waves, currents,
etc.), bad luck, pirates, explosive cargoes, incompetent navigators,
and other natural and human causes are favorites among skeptical investigators.
The modern legend of the Bermuda Triangle began soon after five
Navy planes vanished on a training mission during a severe storm in 1945. Over the years there
have been dozens of articles, books, and television programs promoting the mystery of the
Bermuda Triangle. In his study of this material, Larry Kushe found that few did any investigation
into the mystery. Rather, they passed on the speculations of their predecessors as if they
were passing on the mantle of truth.
In short, the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery
by a kind of communal reinforcement among uncritical authors and a willing mass media to uncritically
pass on the speculation that something mysterious is going on in the Atlantic.
