As background, my current writing project tackles the question of mysterious disappearances – sort of. Mostly, its a SyFy Channel treatment of the subject, so future readers shouldn’t get their hopes up for deep discussions (it’s a creature feature story, and I must admit I’m having a lot of fun writing it). But out of curiosity, I did some simple math today, and found this…intriguing pattern.
- 1586(ish) – Roanoke colony disappears
- 1872 – Mary Celeste is discovered floating, empty
If you take the difference of these two dates (the 1586 is a bit of a fudge – the colony was out of contact for three years, so it could have happened any time in that time frame), you get 286 years apart. Now these were just the two that popped into mind, and being curious if I could force a pattern out of this, I divided that number in two and got 143 years (under the assumption it happened more often, and because this first answer didn’t quite help me)(I’m writing fiction, I get to make the facts fit!). And 1872 + 143 = 2015!
So, assuming a cycle as long as 143 years (but maybe only 70 something!), we can expect another small population to just vanish this year. You’re welcome.