It's one of the most dangerous
and mysterious places on Earth.
It's home to dozens of sunken ships,
plane crashes, and
dead people.
It's known as the Bermuda Triangle
and it's shrouded in mystery.
The 1.3 million square kilometers (500,000 sq mi) of ocean
that is the Bermuda Triangle
goes from Florida
to Puerto Rico
and then all the way to Bermuda.
Since the 1800s,
there have been nearly 1,000 reported incidents
of people mysteriously disappearing in the area.
ranging from small bush planes
carrying just two passengers,
to ships 150 meters (500 feet) long
carrying over 300 people.
So, if we decided to put our trash here,
would that disappear as well?
Before we even think of
dumping our garbage into the Bermuda Triangle,
we first need to figure out
exactly how we'd get there.
Naturally, we'd take a boat as
we're going to dump our trash into the sea,
and a boat would allow us to carry more,
and be more accurate as to where we want it to go.
You might be thinking that
this is an incredibly risky move.
Going right to the center of the Bermuda Triangle?
Are you insane?
But there's a pretty good chance that we'll be just fine.
There's a number of theories,
some good and some bad,
as to what really happens in the Bermuda Triangle.
Is it some crazy alien portal
that's abducting all our humans?
Is there a massive underwater city that's underneath it?
Or is there a scary sea monster living in it?
As fun as these theories may sound,
they're all incredibly far from the truth.
Sorry about that.
One of the more plausible theories we have
about the Bermuda Triangle disappearances
has to do with methane explosions.
The theory is that
these methane explosions come up from the ocean floor,
and erupt so violently, that they're able to tip
even the most massive ships.
But since this theory has been proposed,
physicists, as well as ocean experts, have debunked it.
They've said there's virtually no chance of a methane explosion
being big enough to topple over a boat.
And if there was a massive explosion,
there's a good chance the ship would survive.
That's because boats are built to handle massive changes in the water,
including huge waves and even methane bubbles.
So now that we're here with our trash,
we can finally dump it.
But now it seems to be just floating there,
living in the ocean.
Where's the giant sinkhole
that makes all our trash magically disappear?
You know, the same place that's
taken all these planes and boats over the years?
It turns out that
the Bermuda Triangle
isn't all that dangerous.
Sure, it may be a little mysterious, but
all these disappearances can be attributed to severe weather,
massive waves, and human error.
The Bermuda Triangle isn't even the most lethal body of water in the world.
That title
can be given to the oceans in East Asia and Australia.
And although nearly 1,000 deaths
in the past 200 years might
seem like a lot,
it really isn't when you consider the fact that
the Bermuda Triangle is one of the most heavily traveled areas
of ocean and sky in the world.
So sure,
we'll need to watch out for any hurricanes and big waves,
but that'll be the least of our worries for now.
We just dumped tons of trash into the ocean.
We thought that
maybe the Bermuda Triangle would somehow get rid of it.
This was a really dumb idea.
Unfortunately, what we just did
probably won't even be all that noticeable in the sea.
An estimated 14 billion tons of trash
is thrown into the ocean every year.
Let's say we threw
all of New York's trash, for a year,
into the Bermuda Triangle.
That's 14 million tons of garbage.
It might sound like a lot,
but it would only be a tiny fragment
of the rest of the trash that's tossed into the ocean each year.
This was a pretty terrible idea,
and definitely not one that should be attempted.
And it's not for our safety, but
for the safety of our ocean.
Instead of adding to the problem, we should be helping to solve it
by doing our best to clean the ocean.
Maybe a better idea
would be to throw our trash into a volcano.
That has to work, right?
Well, we'll leave that story for another, WHAT IF.