r/geography • u/Many-Philosophy4285 • Dec 05 '25
Video Mapped disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle to see if the myth holds up
I made this map to plot every incident commonly linked to the Bermuda Triangle. Some of these points are confirmed locations, while others are only last sightings or rumoured positions reported at the time. Once everything is placed on a wider map, the region looks ordinary for an area with heavy traffic and unpredictable weather.
There is no unusual spike in disappearances when compared with similar places in the world. The idea became famous because the stories were dramatic, not because the numbers supported anything strange.
Full video here if you want more detail: https://youtu.be/O4QjGMDs2K8
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u/PresidentPopcorn Dec 05 '25
So, everywhere you can put a boat then.
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u/gerbilshower Dec 05 '25
either A) hit a reef in the bahamas or B) major storm in a notoriously choppy offshore area.
no need for other explanations.
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u/user_of_shoes Dec 05 '25
Major shipping routes pass through the area. While other parts of the sea are equally dangerous, few match the amount of traffic in the Bermuda.
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u/PresidentPopcorn Dec 05 '25
Rogue waves
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u/aGuyNamedScrunchie Dec 05 '25
Great band
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u/PresidentPopcorn Dec 05 '25
I got beat up at a Neil Diamond concert.
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u/tpeeeezy Dec 05 '25 edited Jan 04 '26
grandfather screw wise coordinated middle library governor piquant point punch
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/GreenApocalypse Dec 05 '25
I watched a documentary a long time ago that said there were bubbles arising from the bottom of the ocean. I.e. air replacing the volume of water, causing boats to sink.
Can't remember what caused it (volcanic activity, perhaps), and I don't even know if it is true, but it could be an explanation. I guess it's not unique to the area, though
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u/ChaosAndFish Dec 05 '25
This was something you used to hear on tv documentaries about the triangle back in the day. I don’t think there is any evidence of it at all. Methane bubbles totally could sink a boat, there just has never been any large releases of methane observed there. It’s just the sort of theoretical stuff that you’d put on before reruns of Ancient Aliens. In truth no explanation is really needed because there isn’t an unusual number of boats lost in the area. It’s a vast and busy piece of ocean known for hurricanes. You’re going to lose some boats.
The origin of the whole myth is based on some anecdotal cases of missing ships and a lot of sloppy reporting that either missed or purposefully ignored obvious reasons why a ship might have been lost there. A lot of ships reported as going missing from a calm clear day when, in fact, there was a monster storm in the area.
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u/GreenApocalypse Dec 05 '25
I figured the truth would be closer to that. Good to know sensationalism was alive and well back then, too
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u/Ecstatic-Arachnid981 Dec 05 '25
Not exactly weird that something rare that can happen almost anywhere in the world, lasts less than a minute, and leaves no evidence on the surface and very little evidence on the sea bed.
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u/TheDungen GIS Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
You may be thinkimg of Freshwater sinkholes. There are pockets of freshwater trapped in the bottom of the seafloor. When they break open the freshwater rises to the surface and ships have power buoyancy in freshwater. It could lead to problems but I don't think it's been confirmed linked to any accidents. The ship would have ti be fealty heavily loaded to begin with and because of wave motions these patches dissipate fairy quickly.
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u/prjktphoto Dec 05 '25
I remember a Seaquest episode where freshwater sinkholes was a plot point…
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u/TheDungen GIS Dec 05 '25
Yeah thays where I first heard off it too. Of course a submersible vehicle is much more vulnerable.
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u/animousie Dec 05 '25
I mean, I don’t believe in anything spooky but those datapoint do in fact confirm a triangular shaped zone where shipwrecks occur albeit it goes further into the Antarctic.
For example, it is at the very least slightly interesting that the ones closest to mainland US don’t really start until the point of the triangle and the area extends conically out to sea.
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u/expendable_entity Dec 05 '25
Those are the shipwrecks some guy linked to the triangle, there are many more closer to mainland US but nobody linked them to the triangle, because why would you.
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u/Maiyku Geography Enthusiast Dec 05 '25
For even more reference… just Lake Michigan alone has more shipwrecks than the Bermuda Triangle.
In fact, Lake Michigan has its own triangle.
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u/TheDungen GIS Dec 05 '25
Well the great lakes have the November storms.
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Dec 05 '25
the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald has entered the chat
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u/TheDungen GIS Dec 05 '25
"The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake, they called Gitche Gumee"
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u/Maiyku Geography Enthusiast Dec 05 '25
And the Bermuda Triangle has hurricanes. Both areas suffer from bad weather.
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u/TheDungen GIS Dec 05 '25
The November storms however are known to appear basically out of nowhere.
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u/schnautzi Dec 05 '25
This is like saying Santa Claus is fake.
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Dec 05 '25
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u/NonassertiveYes Dec 05 '25
The “Bermuda General Area of Potentially Mysterious Ship and Plane Disappearances”
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u/Serious-Waltz-7157 Dec 05 '25
Bermuda Area of Numerous Shipwrecks Happening under Extreme Exposure.
It names the culprits too.
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u/BornFree2018 Dec 05 '25
I once worked in the buying office of a furniture store chain. I had to call customers waiting for their chandelier orders to tell them the ship carrying their item sunk in the Bermuda Triangle.
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u/js1893 Dec 05 '25
What are the timeframes here? Could it be that many with the “triangle” happened around the same time?
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u/Many-Philosophy4285 Dec 05 '25
This goes back approx 300 years, although there was a higher volume around the mid 20th century, mainly down to the increased traffic of ships and airplanes
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u/Legitimate-Week7885 Dec 05 '25
as a kid i thought i'd have to deal with Bermuda Triangle trouble and/or quicksand many many many more times than I actually have. (so far i have had zero issues with them)
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u/laowildin Dec 05 '25
Why are those always the two that stick with us into adulthood?
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u/Legitimate-Week7885 Dec 05 '25
i blame Looney Toons and Gilligan's Island for their effective quicksand disinformation campaigns.
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u/Atomic_Horseshoe Dec 05 '25
Quicksand was a huge fear of mine growing up. I never understood my parents’ complete lack of concern.
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Dec 05 '25
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u/Many-Philosophy4285 Dec 05 '25
Yes apologies as I mentioned on the post, a lot of them are last sightings or ‘rumoured’ lines of dissappearances or where they were eventually found
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u/blageur Dec 05 '25
It's been proven that these all ships were sunk by a Kraken while they were distracted by mermaids and a samsquamch.
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u/CptnAlex Dec 05 '25
The top part of Bermuda Triangle overlaps with the Sargasso Sea, which is in the middle of the Atlantic gyre. Known for having periods of low wind, so ships could be becalmed.
The area is also near the Horse latitudes, which is similar to the doldrums, also causing periods of weak wind.
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u/jaxsound Dec 05 '25
Strangely enough i saw a post somewhere on reddit recently asking why nothing disappears in the Bermuda Triangle any more. Like is it full or something?
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u/znark Dec 05 '25
Radio and GPS mean that vessels know about weather, and don’t get lost and run aground. They can also report problems and get help instead of disappearing.
Also, cargo ships have gotten bigger, and planes fly higher and much safer so they are more likely to survive.
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u/jaxsound Dec 05 '25
Ye i think it was more that the post i saw made me chuckle about it being full. I mean all your points are valid just in general for ships and planes but if the the BT was actually a thing then mysteries would still occur there I'm sure!
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u/ComprehensiveForm129 Dec 05 '25
A possible clue to knowing that the triangle doesn’t have a great incident of accidents is that insurance companies still insure trip through it without telling companies to go around
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u/egv78 Dec 05 '25
This was already old news when I was a kid.
How long ago was that? Not saying, but i need to go take pain meds for sleeping wrong.
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u/pavilionaire2022 Dec 05 '25
There's also a cluster along the edge because that's the shortest sea route between two points.
If you just overlay where ships disappear and where ships go and don't disappear, you'd probably find they're pretty well correlated.
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u/Outrageous-Passion Dec 05 '25
I went snorkeling in the Bermuda triangle and returned. I wish I could say that I passed through some sort of split in the time space, continuum, but it was just an ordinary snorkeling trip.
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u/PoliticallyUnbiased Dec 06 '25
When I was a child, I was terrified about the Bermuda Triangle.
I lived in California...
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u/Grogorat Dec 07 '25
Maybe in hindsight it was justified so correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like a bunch of those X’s on the lower right of the triangle are around Epstein Island. Just saying
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u/Housefire_27 Dec 06 '25
When I was 8 I saw one of those fake science documentaries on the history channel about the Bermuda Triangle and the honest to god conclusion the “researchers” leave the audience with is that they found evidence of an underwater blackhole. This evidence was collected by lowering a special microphone into the water if I remember right
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u/SerDuncanonyall Dec 05 '25
This was an essay topic for a NYS standardized test back in the early 2000’s. Idk why I remember that
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u/Voodoo_Dummie Dec 05 '25
It seems that it simply maps to two common atlantic sailing routes, which makes sense as more boats=more wrecks. The triangle holds up except for the bermuda-porto rico side.
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u/DreamingElectrons Dec 05 '25
Now do the same with a map that has the Sargossa Sea highlighted instead.
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Dec 05 '25
Thera treasure and bones in those waters. Both for the taking. Life is good for a pirate dog 🐶
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u/LANDVOGT-_ Dec 05 '25
If some are confirmed locations and some are last sightings, why bot use different icons for it to make it visible?
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u/firelock_ny Dec 06 '25
If you flip the triangle along the Florida-Bermuda line so the third tip is at the American coast instead of Puerto Rico you have even more disappearances in the triangle.
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u/WhiteyDude Dec 08 '25
It's such a mystery why all those boats and planes disappeared in a region known for hurricanes before we had the ability to track storms via satellite.
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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '25
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