ARE WE ALONE? the drake equation AND THE ODDS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE BEYOUND EARTH

I was a student at the University of Virginia when I first encountered what some call the Green Bank Equation — more formally known as the Drake Equation. The course, Life Beyond Earth, examined two questions: Are we alone in the universe? And can we build colonies in space? The second was inspired by the work of Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill at Princeton University, published as The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, and will be the subject of a future newsletter. This newsletter focuses on the first question: Are we alone?

The Milky Way Galaxy above St. George Island, FL composited with a lunar eclipse - original photography by John Topping (Composited with AI assistance)

Green Bank, 1961

On November 1, 1961, roughly a dozen of the most distinguished scientists in America gathered at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, for a meeting that helped shape the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence. J. Peter Pearman of the National Academy of Sciences’ Space Science Board had asked astronomer Frank Drake to convene a serious discussion about whether SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, had any reasonable scientific basis for optimism. To focus the conversation, Drake wrote a simple equation on the blackboard.

The attendees carried exceptional credentials. Biochemist Melvin Calvin received a phone call during the meeting informing him he had just won the Nobel Prize. Biologist Joshua Lederberg, himself a Nobel laureate, was in the room. So was physicist Philip Morrison, one of the original architects of the Manhattan Project. And sitting among them, just days short of his twenty-seventh birthday, was Carl Sagan, who would go on to become one of the most influential astronomers in the world, and a vocal advocate for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

The Equation

N  =  R^*  ×  f_p  ×  n_e  ×  f_l  ×  f_i  ×  f_c  ×  L

Drake's equation calculates a single number: N, the estimated number of civilizations in our galaxy currently producing signals we might detect. It gets there by multiplying seven factors:

R*  The rate at which new stars suitable for life form in the galaxy

fp  The fraction of those stars that have planetary systems

ne  The average number of planets per system that could support life

fl  The fraction of those planets where life actually develops

fi  The fraction of life-bearing planets where intelligence emerges

fc  The fraction of intelligent species that develop technology capable of communicating across space

L  The length of time such a civilization continues to broadcast detectable signals

The first three terms, star formation, planetary systems, habitable planets, were highly speculative in 1961. Today, thanks to the Kepler space telescope and its successors, we have far fewer observational constraints. Planets are extraordinarily common. The Milky Way contains an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars, and planetary systems appear to be the rule rather than the exception. NASA estimates the number of planets in the habitable zone around stars like our sun is at least 300 million.

The last four terms are where the equation becomes speculative. How often does life begin on a suitable planet? How often does it reach intelligence? How often does intelligence develop communications technology? And how long does a technological civilization broadcast? Those questions remain unanswered, and the range of defensible estimates spans from 'the galaxy is teeming with civilizations' to 'we are probably alone.'

Sagan's Optimism — and the Paradox It Creates

At Green Bank in 1961, Carl Sagan was among the most optimistic voices in the room. He believed technological civilizations were not rare, that intelligence was a natural product of evolution, and that many civilizations would find ways to survive their own technological adolescence. Two decades later, he brought the Drake Equation to a mass audience through his landmark television series Cosmos. The question of whether we are alone in the universe became part of our cultural conversation.

Sagan's optimism creates a problem, however. If the equation's optimistic estimates are correct, if the galaxy hosts millions of communicating civilizations, then physicist Enrico Fermi's famous question demands an answer: where is everybody? We have been listening for only a short time, and we have found no definitive evidence of alien civilizations. Silence is not what you would expect from a galaxy teeming with civilizations; hence the Fermi Paradox.

Comet NEOWISE from St. George Island, FL July 2020 - photo by John Topping

Scientists have detected organic molecules, including amino acids, in comet.

Various Explanations

The silence we observe from Earth is not evidence that the galaxy is empty. Below are some of the most prominent explanations for the Fermi Paradox:

The Great Filter. Economist Robin Hanson hypothesized that either life rarely begins, rarely develops complex cells and intelligence, or that technological civilizations usually destroy themselves. If he’s correct, have we passed the filter, or does it lie in front of us?

Civilizations Destroy Themselves. Technology produces nuclear weapons, engineered pathogens, and climate disruption. The variable L in Drake's equation, how long a civilization broadcasts, may be very short for most species. This is the most pessimistic reading of the Fermi Paradox. Nevil Shute’s, On the Beach, a classic nuclear apocalypse novel, exemplifies this. It was turned into a 1959 movie starring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. Another favorite, Forbidden Planet, offers a non-human example. The 1956 sci-fi classic stared a serious Leslie Neilsen, Walter Pidgoen and Anne Francis. The poor Krell never knew what killed them. I pay homage to the movie in my Atlantis Trilogy by referencing “Krell metal.”

The Dark Forest. Popularized by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin in The Dark Forest (2008; English translation, 2015), the second novel of his Three-Body Problem trilogy, this hypothesis proposes that the universe is silent because broadcasting your location is lethal. Any civilization advanced enough to detect another has rational cause to either hide or destroy it before it becomes a threat. Independence Day offers another reason to fear attacking extraterrestrial attention: rapacious aliens intent on stealing other species’ resources and destroying them in the process.

Non-intervention. Perhaps advanced civilizations operate under something like Star Trek's Prime Directive, a deliberate policy of not contacting species that have not yet reached a certain threshold.

A corollary to the non-intervention concept was exemplified by the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still (remade in 2008). In that film, the alien Klaatu warns that Earth's violence could threaten other worlds.  Humanity’s growing capacity for destruction triggered alien intervention. Another vivid illustration comes from Carl Sagan. His novel Contact (1985), adapted into a film in 1997, depicts contact unfolding in stages: a radio signal is received, but only when humanity develops the ability to understand and act on the embedded instructions does a genuine meeting become possible.

The Zoo Hypothesis. A variant of non-intervention: we are being deliberately observed, kept in an undisturbed state like animals in a nature preserve. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the episode Who Watches the Watchers follows Federation anthropologists observing a less advanced civilization from a concealed post. In the classic Twilight Zone episode People Are Alike All Over, Roddy McDowall plays an astronaut who is welcomed by the Martians and given an Earth-like home which turns out to be a cage in a zoo.

The Planetarium Hypothesis. A darker variant: we are not merely uncontacted but deceived. The universe we observe may be a simulation, carefully constructed to appear empty. What we take for cosmic silence may be a stage set. The closest example I can find is the Star Trek episode For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky. A sick Dr. McCoy stays on Yonada, an asteroid ship whose inhabitants are unaware that their world is an enclosure. If you have a better example, let me know.

Rare Earth. Perhaps the conditions that produced complex life on Earth — a large stabilizing moon, a gas giant like Jupiter that helps shield the inner solar system, plate tectonics, our position in a quiet galactic neighborhood — are so improbably specific that intelligent life is extraordinarily rare, regardless of what the optimistic terms of Drake's equation suggest. Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and Frank Herbert's Dune series offer a suggestive fictional parallel: both depict a galaxy populated exclusively by humanity and its descendants, with no independent alien civilizations to encounter.

Communication Issues. We have been listening for radio messages for years. The "water hole" is a relatively quiet band of radio frequencies between the natural signals of hydrogen and hydroxyl, the ingredients of water. Lying roughly between 1,420 and 1,660 megahertz, the water hole has been a favored frequency range on the theory that civilizations associated with water-based life might recognize it as a natural meeting point. But a civilization millions of years more advanced than us might communicate by means we have not yet mastered: neutrino beams, quantum entanglement, optical laser pulses, or methods entirely outside our current physics. The Polish science fiction writer, Stanislaw Lem wrote several novels, His Master’s Voice and Solaris, where we got a message or encountered aliens, but couldn’t understand them.

Robots and Artificial Intelligence (a corollary to civilizations destroying themselves). Given the current debates about artificial intelligence, I cannot leave this one out. For decades, scientists and science fiction writers have explored the possibility that robots and artificial intelligence could destroy or subjugate a civilization. They’ve even speculated that the first extrasolar intelligence we meet will be artificial. Hollywood loves the concept. Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) depicts enforced machine rule; The Terminator (1984) and The Matrix (1999) depict catastrophic war and human survival under machine domination. There are many more examples.

If you have a favorite film or book that exemplifies one of these theories, let me know.

In Sum

Frank Drake wrote seven variables on a blackboard in West Virginia in 1961 and asked humanity to do the arithmetic. Those of us who believe that we are not alone are still waiting for definitive evidence of extrasolar intelligence. Those who believe we are alone point to silence as evidence of the uniqueness of intelligence on Earth.

Sources: Frank Drake, NRAO Green Bank conference, November 1–2, 1961. Interesting Engineering, "The Drake Equation and Carl Sagan's Unshakable Optimism." SETI Institute, Drake Equation overview. Slate, Green Bank conference retrospective. Astrobites, "Frank Drake's Equation and Legacy." Robin Hanson, 'The Great Filter — Are We Almost Past It?' (1998). Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem (2008, English trans. 2014) and The Dark Forest (2008, English trans. 2015). Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (2000).

Legacy of Atlantis by John Topping — available now from The Story Plant / Gramarye Media.

Bigfoot: How Sasquatch became an american icon

Happy National Bigfoot Day! Fifty-nine years ago today, on October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin filmed what became the most famous footage of an alleged Sasquatch ever recorded. Bigfoot enthusiasts began promoting the anniversary as National Sasquatch Awareness Day around 2009. While unofficial, it has become an annual excuse to celebrate the big guy.

Fittingly, today also marks the U.S. release of Capturing Bigfoot, a new documentary from director Marq Evans that premiered at South by Southwest in March. Opening in select cities and on Prime Video on Bigfoot Day, it promises previously unseen 16mm footage that its filmmakers say sheds new light on how the famous 1967 film came to be. Nearly sixty years later, a few seconds of grainy film are still headlining a feature documentary.

Capturing Bigfoot Documentary

Over the decades Bigfoot stopped being a frightening wilderness mystery and became an American icon. Bigfoot’s footprint is everywhere: on movie screens, television sets, roadside statues, refrigerator magnets, bumper stickers and T-shirts from Maine to Miami and from Montauk to Malibu. Today Bigfoot is probably the most recognizable cryptid on the planet. How did a creature that may not exist become one of the most durable icons in American culture?

The answer begins, as so many American myths do, with a newspaper headline.

The answer begins, as so many American myths do, with a newspaper headline.

The Birth of 'Bigfoot' — 1958

On August 27, 1958, a construction worker named Jerry Crew showed up at the Humboldt Times in Eureka, California, carrying a plaster cast of an enormous footprint — fifteen inches long, with a stride of more than four feet — that he had found near Bluff Creek in the Six Rivers National Forest. Reporter Andrew Genzoli ran the story the next day under a headline that gave the creature its popular name: Bigfoot.

Crew and his coworkers had been finding the prints for weeks. They were frightened enough to consider abandoning the job site. Genzoli's story was picked up by the Associated Press and syndicated across the country. Within days, 'Bigfoot' had entered the American vocabulary. The earlier word, Sasquatch, borrowed from Indigenous tradition by British Columbia schoolteacher J.W. Burns in the 1920s, remained in circulation, but Bigfoot was the name that stuck in the popular imagination (a future newsletter will cover Bigfoot in Indigenous lore).

It would later emerge that the tracks may have been the work of Ray Wallace, a prankster and logging contractor who was present at the site. After Wallace's death in 2002, his family produced large wooden feet they claimed he had used to make fake prints for years. Skeptics declared the Bigfoot legend dead. True believers pointed out that similar tracks had been reported across North America long before 1958, and that Wallace's alleged hoax could not explain all of them.

The Film That Changed Everything — 1967

On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin were on horseback near Bluff Creek, the same general region where Jerry Crew had found his famous prints, when, by their account, they encountered a large, hair-covered figure walking upright along the edge of a creek bed. Patterson grabbed his 16mm camera and ran after it, filming roughly 59 seconds of footage before the figure disappeared into the trees.

Frame 352 of the Patterson–Gimlin film is one of the most scrutinized pieces of home footage in history (betting that the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination is the most scrutinized). It shows a large, dark-furred, apparently female figure — later nicknamed 'Patty' — glancing back over her shoulder at the camera as she walks away. The gait, the proportions, the movement of muscle beneath fur: experts have debated every frame for nearly sixty years. The film’s authenticity remains in dispute.

Frame 352 remains the most recognizable image of Bigfoot.

What the Patterson–Gimlin film unquestionably achieved was making Bigfoot a national obsession. It was broadcast on television, printed in newspapers, and debated in scientific journals. It gave the creature a face, a body, and a way of moving. It made Bigfoot feel real in a way that footprint casts never could. And it launched a cottage industry of investigators, enthusiasts, debunkers, and believers.

Bigfoot Comes to Hollywood

Once Bigfoot had a face, Hollywood wanted it. The creature's first significant screen appearances came in the 1970s, when the phenomenon was at its first great cultural peak. One of the first was the 1972 documentary Bigfoot: Man or Beast? The mid-70s film The Legend of Bigfoot presented itself as a serious investigation. Even The Six Million Dollar Man got into the act with a 1976 two-part episode titled 'The Secret of Bigfoot.' Sasquatch, played by André the Giant, was actually a bionic creation of alien visitors.

The creature's definitive pop-culture moment, however, came in 1987 with Harry and the Hendersons starring John Lithgow. The film, which won the Academy Award for Best Makeup, presented Bigfoot as a gentle, curious, deeply affectionate being who accidentally ends up living with a suburban Seattle family. Harry was not frightening. Harry was sweet, clumsy, and heartbroken when the Hendersons realized they had to return him to the wilderness. While still frightening to some, the film softened the image of Bigfoot for many. Rather than a wild creature, he could be powerful but peaceful, wild but warm, a creature that wants nothing more than to be left alone in his forest.

Television kept pace. Bigfoot appeared or was referenced in dozens of series across the decades — from In Search Of... (hosted by Leonard Nimoy) to The X-Files, from Northern Exposure to The Simpsons. The animated series have been particularly generous: Bigfoot has appeared in everything from Scooby-Doo to South Park to Gravity Falls, each version reflecting the cultural moment — monster, mystery, comic figure, or misunderstood neighbor.

One final note. Given the resemblance of Chewbacca to Bigfoot, could George Lucas’ creation have been influenced by Bigfoot?

From Monster to Mascot: The Merchandise Empire

At some point in the 1970s and 1980s, Bigfoot made a decisive leap from feared cryptid to beloved mascot. Today the Bigfoot merchandise industry is impossible to measure in full. Walk into any gift shop near a national forest in the Pacific Northwest, and the shelves tell the story: Bigfoot T-shirts, Bigfoot coffee mugs, Bigfoot emojis, Bigfoot Christmas ornaments … the list goes on and on.

T-shirt from Montauk, NY

Beer from N. Georgia Mountains

T-shirt from store in Georgia Mountains

The collectors’ market adds another dimension. Bigfoot-themed coins, including a five dollar Canadian Maple Leaf coin, have become a small but dedicated niche. The creature's silhouette, instantly recognizable from the Patterson-Gimlin footage, functions as a kind of folk logo, appearing on everything from craft beer labels to professional and college sports mascots. The United States now has numerous museums and museum exhibits devoted to the creature. 

Sterling Silver Bigfoot collector's "Round"

Official $5 Canadian Maple Leaf with Bigfoot "Privy"

Trailer hitch cover

The roadside statues deserve a paragraph of their own. Carved from logs by chainsaw artists or forged in iron, these figures appear throughout the Northwest and Appalachia. Most are eight to ten feet tall, arms slightly raised, expression somewhere between friendly and furtive. They have become a form of American roadside folk art.

Perhaps the most successful commercial Bigfoot venture of the modern era, however, is the Jack Link's Beef Jerky campaign 'Messin' with Sasquatch,' which launched in 2006. The ads showed campers provoking a mild-mannered Sasquatch with pranks — replacing his beef jerky with a pinecone, drawing on his face while he slept — and suffering increasingly spectacular consequences. The campaign ran for years, won advertising awards, and cemented the image of Bigfoot as a creature with a sense of humor, however limited its patience. Jack Link's Sasquatch is not terrifying. He is, in his way, deeply relatable.

Reality Television and the Modern Hunt

The twenty-first century brought Bigfoot into the golden age of reality television. Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot premiered in 2011 and ran for nine seasons without the team ever finding Bigfoot. The show's appeal lay not in resolution but in the search: the night-vision hikes, the wood-knocking calls into the darkness, the eyewitness testimonials, the earnest debates about tree structures and thermal signatures.

Expedition Bigfoot, which premiered on the Travel Channel in 2019, applied a more data-driven approach, using predictive algorithms to identify high-probability search zones. It found potential evidence but, like every expedition before it, not the creature itself. The pursuit continues, which is precisely why it makes good television: Bigfoot, like all great mysteries, is better unsolved.

The internet age brought its own contributions. The BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) maintains a searchable database of thousands of catalogued sightings (which is the subject of a future newsletter). Reddit's r/bigfoot community has hundreds of thousands of members. YouTube hosts thousands of hours of alleged footage, analysis, and commentary. Podcasts devoted to the subject number in the dozens.

Why We Want Bigfoot to Exist

There is something worth examining in the sheer persistence of this phenomenon. Bigfoot has survived repeated debunkings, multiple alleged confessions, and the complete absence of physical remains. He has survived the proliferation of trail cameras and camera phones. He has not only survived but flourished through decades of organized searches and the mapping of virtually every wilderness area in North America. His cultural footprint keeps growing — pun intended.

Bigfoot appeals to our desire for mystery.  We live in an age of satellite imagery and GPS tracking. The idea that something large and genuinely unknown might still inhabit the deep forests is both intriguing and cool. While frightening in early reports, Bigfoot has become, culturally, something different: a wild man with dignity, a forest dweller who asks nothing of civilization except to be left alone. In an era of environmental concern and accelerating habitat loss, there is something appealing about a creature that represents pure wilderness. If you’d rather wax philosophical, perhaps we are anthropomorphizing the forest and the unknown. Bigfoot could be a part of us that wishes we’d never left the forest.

Bigfoot in the Atlantis Universe

One of the principal characters in the Atlantis Universe is AkuBrugal — AB for short. AB is a pipe-smoking sasquatch with a hint of a British accent and a dry sense of humor. Think of a cross between Hagrid and Chewbacca. He lives in Deepwood Hold, a cave system hidden within the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.

In the Atlantis Universe, the question of why sasquatches have never been officially discovered has a specific answer: they were genetically engineered by surviving Atlanteans to serve as their caretakers, and they also possess a form of telepathic camouflage. If you spot one, it can make you believe you saw something else — a bear, a tree trunk, a large rock. As for photographic evidence, Atlantean technology can easily overwhelm anything we currently possess.

AB, as a character, reflects the affectionate version of Bigfoot that popular culture developed over the second half of the twentieth century. He is not frightening. He is not a monster. He is something rarer and more interesting: a being of tremendous capability and long memory living quietly at the edge of the world humanity knows, watching with a mixture of amusement and concern. As Charlie’s guardian and quiet mentor, he plays a significant role in the Atlantis Universe. He is, among other things, part philosopher and part comedian. He has his own blog on my website: Words of Wisdom from AB. While writing Legacy of Atlantis, he became my favorite character.

Sources

Humboldt Times (Eureka, CA), August 28, 1958 (original 'Bigfoot' headline); Patterson–Gimlin film, October 20, 1967; 'The Secret of Bigfoot,' The Six Million Dollar Man, ABC, 1976; Harry and the Hendersons, Universal Pictures, 1987; Finding Bigfoot, Animal Planet, 2011–2019; Expedition Bigfoot, Travel Channel, 2019–present; Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, bfro.net; Willow Creek–China Flat Museum, Willow Creek, CA; Jack Link's 'Messin' with Sasquatch' advertising campaign, 2006–present; Coleman, Loren, Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America, Paraview Pocket Books, 2003; Capturing Bigfoot, dir. Marq Evans, XYZ Films, 2026.

Akrotiri: The City that May have inspired Atlantis

I recently visited Santorini, our first stop after leaving Athens. Our cruise ship joined several others in the enormous caldera. The blue domes and white buildings set along the cliffs of the ancient volcano were breathtaking. Once up on the cliffs looking down at the multiple cruise ships, I couldn’t imagine the violence of the eruption needed to create such a huge crater. After one stop, our guide pointed to a spot near the water at the southwestern end of Santorini — Akrotiri. He explained that the ruins of Akrotiri were discovered in the 1860s, but that systematic excavations didn’t start until 1967. He finished with the intriguing theory that the destruction of Akrotiri could have been the basis for the legend of Atlantis.

Santorini's volcanic caldera - Photo by John Topping

The City Under the Ash

Sometime around 1600 BC, the Aegean island of Thera, now called Santorini, erupted with a violence that ranked among the largest in recorded human history. Pinning down the exact date has proven surprisingly difficult. A 2018 article in Discover Magazine reported on researchers who used tree rings from bristlecone pines and Irish oaks grown 7,000 miles apart to demonstrate inconsistencies in carbon-14 levels. As a result, they estimated the eruption date as being between 1660 and 1525 BC. Even the most catastrophic events in human prehistory, like the eruption of Thera, are challenging to precisely date.

The Thera eruption was enormous, at VEI 6-7 on a scale that runs from 1 to 8. To put it into perspective, Mount St. Helens, a VEI 5, was much smaller, and Krakatoa, a VEI 6, was a bit smaller. The eruption blasted enormous quantities of ash, gas, and rock twenty-five miles into the atmosphere. The center of the island collapsed into the emptied magma chamber, forming the horseshoe-shaped caldera that today makes Santorini one of the most dramatically beautiful places on Earth. The deep blue waters, 1,300 feet deep in places, hide the enormity of the catastrophe.

Buried beneath the pumice and ash on the island's southern coast was Akrotiri, a prosperous, sophisticated Minoan city of several thousand people. Much like Pompeii, the pumice and ash both preserved and hid the ruins. When archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos began excavating the site in 1967, what emerged was staggering: two- and three-story buildings still standing, their walls decorated with vivid frescoes of fishermen, spring flowers, ships at sea, and blue monkeys. Given the violence of the eruption, it’s remarkable that so much remains intact. Among the most remarkable discoveries is the Fleet Fresco in the West House, a panoramic painting of a seafaring procession that gives us a detailed picture of Minoan maritime life. Pottery, impressions of wooden furniture, and storage vessels remained exactly where they had been placed more than three thousand years ago. A drainage system ran beneath the streets. A water supply system served the buildings.

Interestingly, unlike Pompeii, no human remains have been found at Akrotiri. Something, perhaps tremors, minor eruptions or smoke must have given the population enough warning to flee before the final cataclysm. They left their city intact with many of their possessions in place. Then Thera erupted, burying everything.

The Tsunami

The eruption itself was only part of the disaster. When the volcano's magma chamber emptied and the center of the island collapsed, it generated a megatsunami, a series of waves of extraordinary size that radiated across the Aegean. Evidence of the tsunami has been found in deep-sea sediment cores and coastal deposits across the eastern Mediterranean. The Minoan settlements on Crete's northern coast, the side facing Thera, were directly in its path.

Did Thera’s tsunami destroy the Minoan civilization? Probably not, but it could have contributed to its decline. The eruption undoubtedly devastated the Minoan civilization. The tsunami struck coastal settlements that were the heart of Minoan maritime trade, including Crete, the location of the Minoan capital, Knossos. Dense ash fallout may have blanketed much of Crete's agricultural land, acidifying soil and collapsing harvests. The economic disruption to a civilization built on seafaring commerce would have been severe and lasting.

But the Minoan civilization did not collapse due to the Thera eruption. It held on for another century or so, diminished and weakened but still functioning. What finished it was a different force entirely: the Mycenaeans. By around 1450 BC, the Mycenaeans, the mainland Greek civilization described in Homer’s epics, The Odyssey and The Iliad, had moved into Crete and absorbed what remained of Minoan power. The eruption of Thera may have cracked the foundation. The Mycenaeans completed the collapse.

A Note on The Poseidon Adventure

Since I was traveling on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and since the Thera eruption created a tsunami, I must tie in an old movie. The Poseidon Adventure (1972) — the original disaster film starring Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters — follows the ocean liner SS Poseidon on her final voyage from New York to Athens. The catastrophe that capsizes her is a massive wave generated by an undersea earthquake near Crete, approaching the ship at 60 miles per hour. It is, in other words, a tsunami originating in the same waters where the real Thera eruption sent its own waves crashing into the Minoan coastline more than three thousand years earlier. I wonder if the film's screenwriters knew about Thera and Akrotiri when they wrote the scene.

Did Thera Inspire Atlantis?

Many scholars have debated the connection between Thera and Plato's Atlantis since the 1960s. The circumstantial case is compelling. A wealthy, sophisticated island civilization, centered on a volcanic island in the Mediterranean, destroyed in a catastrophic eruption that also devastated the nearest great civilization on Crete generally fits Plato's story of a proud empire that vanished in a single day of earthquakes and floods.

Having said that, the hypothesis has significant problems. Plato places Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, not in the Aegean. He said Atlantis fell nine thousand years before Solon's time, which would put the date around 9600 BC, more than six thousand years before Thera erupted. And he describes it as larger than Libya and Asia Minor combined, a massive island, much larger than Thera.

Scholars who support the Thera hypothesis suggest that 900 years could have become 9,000 over centuries of retellings or a mistranslation of Egyptian records, and that the scale could have been inflated as well. Oral traditions and records copied by hand across cultures and centuries do accumulate errors like a long-term game of telephone. But the Thera hypothesis requires Plato's account to be significantly wrong on multiple specific details that he presents with confidence. Defenders of the Atlantis-as-allegory position, who argue that Plato invented it out of whole cloth, would say that's exactly what you'd expect from a philosophical fable.

No conclusive evidence has established that Thera inspired or influenced Plato’s Atlantis. But the lack of conclusive evidence leaves open the possibility that it did. Akrotiri sits buried in its pumice and ash awaiting further excavation and discoveries. Plato's Atlantis sits in his dialogues, beautiful and impactful, whether historical or allegorical.

 In the Atlantis Universe — and Why I'm Going Back

Thera is an example of how even catastrophic events were imperfectly recorded or dated. The distorted mirror of oral tradition can turn historical events into the seeds from which myth and legend sprout. While much of The Oracle of Atlantis takes place in Mycenaean Greece, the Thera eruption predates that. I look forward to returning to Santorini, visiting Akrotiri, admiring its roughly 3,600-year-old frescoes, and feeling the weight of history at the site that potentially inspired the legend of Atlantis. 

A brief additional note: tsunamis and megatsunamis have always fascinated me. I have written them into my Atlantis novels as well as into two of my technothrillers, Runaway and The Phoenix Conspiracy. Tsunamis and megatsunamis are the subject of a future newsletter.

Town of Oia, Santorini - Photo by John Topping

Further Listening & Reading

The Maritime History Podcast, Episode 013: "Akrotiri, Atlantis, and the Thera Eruption" — a deep dive into the Fleet Fresco found in the West House at Akrotiri, the eruption that buried the city, and the scholarly arguments for the Minoan civilization as Plato's inspiration. Available at maritimehistorypodcast.com and on YouTube.

Discover Magazine, August 15, 2018: "New Date for Greek Eruption That May Have Inspired the Atlantis Myth" — explains how researchers are using single tree rings from ancient bristlecone pines and Irish oaks to refine the eruption's date, and why pinning it down matters for the Atlantis debate.

Sources: Minoan eruption dating, Wikipedia and Discover Magazine (August 2018); Spyridon Marinatos, Akrotiri excavation reports, 1967 onward; PBS Secrets of the Dead, 'Sinking Atlantis — The Fall of the Minoans'; Visit Santorini, 'Akrotiri's Echoes of Atlantis'; The Maritime History Podcast, Episode 013 (maritimehistorypodcast.com).

Addition, not included in the Newsletter

Major Eruptions from Toba to Modern Times

The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) measures the volume of material ejected in an eruption on a scale from 0 to 8. Each step upward represents a tenfold increase in erupted volume, so a VEI 7 eruption like Thera expelled roughly one hundred times the material of the VEI 5 eruption of Mount St. Helens — the event many Americans remember from 1980.

Eruption	Location	Approximate Date	VEI
Toba	Sumatra, Indonesia	74,000 years ago	8
Campanian Ignimbrite(Campi Flegrei)	Near Naples, Italy	40,000 years ago	7
Oruanui (Taupō)	New Zealand	25,700 years ago	8
Kikai–Akahoya	Southern Japan	~7,300 years ago	7
Thera — Santorini	Greece	~1600 BCE (date debated)	7
Tambora	Indonesia	1815	7
Krakatau (Krakatoa)	Indonesia	1883	6
Mount St. Helens	Washington, USA	1980	5
Pinatubo	Philippines	1991	6

Sources: U.S. Geological Survey; Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program; published eruption research. Prehistoric dates and sizes are current estimates.