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There’s little need to recap, but this week brought confirmation of the tragic end of the Titan private submersible and its crew of five, each of whom paid $250,000 for the opportunity to visit the wreck of the Titanic, 13,000 feet under the Atlantic.
If this had been a research submersible, only smart people would have cared; but since it was a crew of rich people and ample news has reported the sub was not up to spec, conspiracy theories — inevitably — came fast and thick, and got the dumb people to care too.
Exacerbating some of these was the fact that the US Navy’s IUSS (Integrated Undersea Surveillance System) — or possibly another system, they’re not saying — detected a loud noise consistent with an implosion as techies knew they would have. The Navy provided very precise positioning data to the US Coast Guard which led the search, and debris was duly found on the ocean floor below the coordinates of the noise. The Coast Guard was following many leads, of course, and in keeping with standard practice, nothing was announced without evidence. The moment the debris field was found, the steps that led to the discovery, including the Navy’s assistance, were made public as well.
Here are three of the more entertaining conspiracy theories.
(Of course) The Jews did it. It’s old news that some of those of an antisemitic bent blame the Rothschild banking family for ordering the sinking of the Titanic (see my Skeptoid episode on Titanic myths for a thorough debunk of this), so it stands to reason that researchers need to be prevented from going down to the wreck for fear they might discover the incriminating evidence. Thus the Rothschilds, or other Evil Jews, were somehow behind the Titan’s implosion.
Biden did it. Biden didn’t want the news to cover his son Hunter’s pleading guilty to a tax misdemeanor, so he ordered the Navy and the Coast Guard to cover up the data of the implosion sound, in order to fool the news media into thinking the passengers might still be alive and keep the coverage off of Hunter. Which is why “the lamestream media said nothing” about Hunter’s plea. In fact, the charges had been all over the news for a couple of weeks.
Elon Musk did it. As it’s known that OceanGate (the Titan’s company) used SpaceX’s Starlink satellite communication network, some have alleged that a Starlink failure contributed in some unspecified way to the loss and the implosion. One theory notes that one of the victims, British billionaire Hamish Harding, was a previous customer of Musk’s rival in space tourism, Blue Origin — therefore Musk must have ordered the Starlink failure in order to rub out Harding, as this might somehow protect Musk’s own struggling space tourism initiative. In fact, only the OceanGate surface ship uses Starlink for its own ship-to-shore communication; Starlink had nothing to with the Titan submersible itself, as satellite signals cannot penetrate the ocean.
Conspiracy theories are, among other things, an easy and convenient way to make any world event fit your preferred world view. If you are one consumed with culture wars and identity politics, then pick whichever conspiracy theory casts the group you hate most as the villains.
Are we tired of this yet, humanity?