The Bermuda Triangle has provided plenty of fodder for fictional tales. More than 100 ships and aircraft have vanished or been destroyed in this area, taking more than 1000 people with them, and no one can explain how or why. It’s also proven to be a handy place for lazy authors to send the characters they have no use for, but aren’t quite ready to kill off yet. Years later, in book number four or five, said character might need to come back. The largely unexplained phenomenon of the Bermuda Triangle allows them to do this. Now, what this reader wants to see is more novels written about just where the hell these folks end up when they vanish into this little pocket. Here are some explanations you might find useful should you choose to satisfy my need:

 

I’ve heard many folks smarter than me blame the Gulf Stream for the disappearance of ships and planes and it sometimes makes sense. The Gulf Stream is fastest and strongest in the Triangle. When ships sink or planes crash, they float for a while. During this time, the vessel might be carried north by the Gulf Stream until it sinks to the ocean floor. This means a vessel could crash or sink in one location, but come to rest a long distance away. By the time rescuers reach the scene, they find a bunch of open water, and no evidence of the disaster. They could search hundreds of miles of sea and still find nothing. Sure this doesn’t explain why so many ships and planes go down in the Triangle, but it could explain why some are never found.

 

I really like saying “space-time continuum.” Anyway, how much does anyone really understand about Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity? He suggested that space and time combine to form one unit, and that everything in the Universe sits on this unit, which acts and reacts like fabric suspended at the ends. (That's my understanding anyway, and I'll admit, it may be flawed) I read that a rip in the space-time continuum is more like a wormhole than a black hole, but what the fuck is the difference? No one knows what’s beyond either of them. Moving on to my point: A worm hole is theorized to teleport you from point A to point B instantly. Points A and B may not be in different physical locations, but they could be in different time periods. What? I know! Insane. You could travel from Earth to some planet no one’s heard of, in seconds, but in Earth years, you’re gone for like a century. When you return, you haven’t aged because of some scientific law I don’t understand, but no one remembers you. Wow. Impossible you say? Well my friend, the laws of physics cease to exist inside a wormhole, so what if the Bermuda Triangle is a really a giant worm hole? That explains everything in my mind.

Rogue waves scare the bejesus out of me. They come with no warning and there is no way to predict where or when they might occur. A rogue wave consists of many regular waves that have merged into one. The thing just grows and grows until it becomes a “holy shit I’m gonna die” wave. And even better than all that, no one knows what the maximum height of a rogue wave is. A 157 foot wave struck Fastnet Lighthouse, in Ireland (1985). Waves of that size could easily turn over ships and sink them in seconds, or knock down a low-flying aircraft. Are rogue waves to blame for the mystery surrounding the Bermuda Triangle? They’d certainly have the potential to obliterate any evidence of the vessel's existence.

 

The Bermuda Triangle is smack in the “oh no it’s a bit too windy” section of the ocean known as Hurricane Alley. Most sailers listen to weather reports and avoid the Triangle when there’s a hurricane brewing, but the Triangle’s mysterious disappearances date back to the Spanish conquistador era, so it’s possible hurricanes might be to blame for some of the early disappearances. You see, the most erratic by-product of a hurricane is a microburst, which is a sudden, unpredictable downdraft that is caused by the hurricane’s rotation sucking air from higher altitudes downward. When this air reaches the water, it spreads out at high speeds, usually more than 170 mph. This is more than enough force to flip over any size of ship. Airplanes can stall and dive into the ocean. Many experienced pilots and sailors fall victim to microbursts. Vanishing without a trace is kind of expected if you encounter a microburst along the Gulf Stream, when you consider the size of the ocean and the speeds of the microbursts and whatnot.

 

So, an electromagnetic anomaly or aberration is explained as a hole in Earth’s electromagnetic field. There are several places where a compass won’t point North; not just in the Triangle. However, it is a little creepy that no matter where you pass through the Bermuda Triangle, the aberrations will not start immediately. Oh no. They wait until you reach the center, and then the compasses go batshit. No underwater aberrations have ever been reported, and the sea floor in the Triangle has been fully mapped with sonar, but it is possible that an electromagnetic aberration has messed up a compass or five and resulted in a crash, but how do we explain why they go without a trace? Hmm. You're the writer, you figure it out.

 

Methane hydrates, (or more accurately methane clathrates, which in water are hydrates) are deposits of methane gas trapped in a natural structure of crystalized water. No one knows how many exist around the world or how large they are. These deposits lie under the seafloor at almost any depth. Some of them are just inches beneath the water's surface. Depending on their size, they can have huge amounts of potential energy. If this energy is released all at once, the resulting eruption can be enough to cause oil well blowouts. So, it’s possible that a methane hydrate deposit could shoot up from the sea floor, ejecting the gas to the surface where a passing ship could find itself in “Fucksakes” territory. The methane gas would turn the water around the ship to a frothy nightmare, which seriously decreases the water’s buoyancy. A ship could sink in seconds and no one would have enough warning to get off. The ocean would simply swallow the vessel. Anyone else finding a cruise less and less attractive?

 

Say that five times fast and you’ll sound smarter. Mass concentration is usually referred to as mascon, and gravitational mascons were believed to exist only in huge celestial bodies, like the Sun. Today, we’re smarter. Probably because we put away the reefer and got our heads screwed on straighter. Now we know that there are positive and negative mass concentrations of gravity under every square inch of every celestial body in the Universe. No one’s figured out what causes them, but we know that the moon’s got the most noticeable gravitational mascons and these coincide with its seas. The soil in these seas is made of basalt, which is extremely dense compared to the material around it. This denser material can pull on shit that orbits around it with more gravity than usual. It is very possible that there are tiny, extremely dense positive mascons scattered under the ocean floor in the Bermuda Triangle. They might not be big enough to affect ships by themselves, but when combined with a ship traveling between two waves, they could drag it under water in seconds and pull it all the way to the bottom. What about the planes, you ask. I’m getting to that. Because air is a thinner medium than water, a mascon’s effect would be even greater on aircraft. My brain hurts. That means this must make sense.

 

Wait. Just hear me out. No one can prove or disprove the existence of aliens. Well, the government could, but they’re not talking. So until a guy in a black suit comes to erase my memory, I'll believe that it is entirely possible that some alien race is just curious about us. They enter our little atmosphere via the Triangle for whatever reason, and snatch a boat or a plane to give the folks on board a little gander. Obviously humans are fascinating, so they keep them and they’re never seen again.

 

Evidence of man-made structures was found in 15 to 20 feet of water just off the northwest coast of North Bimini Island in September 1968. So let’s save time and just jump to the conclusion that these structures used to be part of the Island of Atlantis. Plato theorized that Atlantis thrived around 9,600 BC, and was far more advanced in almost every way than his Ancient Greece. Maybe this civilization was so advanced that it survived sinking. I mean, if Atlantis was really flat, it wouldn’t register on sonar equipment. Maybe their descendants continue to live partly beneath the Triangle. An entire civilization beneath the sea might have the power and technology to disrupt the electromagnetic field, sink ships, drag down aircraft, and remove sunken wreckage. Makes far more sense than that silly rogue wave theory.

 

The most logical theory: Someone fucked up.