People by the many thousands have simply vanished in Alaska. It is the largest of all states in the USA; totaling 656,425 square miles. The current population of 2020 is only 736,990 people, which includes 107,298 Native American Indians that have 20 distinct cultures and 300 different languages. The land mass is larger than Texas and California combined. There are dense forests, rugged mountains, over 3 million lakes, 660 glaciers, and even 130 volcanos that dominate the landscape. Since the biggest state began tracking the numbers in 1988, police have received at least 60,700 reports of missing persons
The great bulk of the missing come from a triangular area which connects Anchorage, the largest city, to Juneau in the south to Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), a small city on the north coast. The triangle has been called: “The Alaska Devil’s Triangle”, “The Bermuda Triangle of Alaska”, “The Alaskan Triangle”, or simply known as “Alaska’s Triangle”.
In October of 1972 a high-profile disappearance occurred over the vast territory when a small airplane carrying United States House Majority leader Hale Boggs, Alaska Congressman Nick Begich, an aide Russell Brown, and their bush pilot Don Jonz apparently just disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau.
For over a month, 50 civilian airplanes and 40 military aircrafts, plus dozens of boats, scoured into an extensive search of an area of 32,000 miles, but no trace of the airplane, the men, wreckage or debris were ever discovered.
In 1950, there was a U.S. Air Force plane, a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, carrying 44 people that strangely vanished from a flight at Anchorage with 4 service members, and 2 civilians on a voyage to Minnesota. The 44 people included 8 crew members, 3 engineers, and 2 civilians (a mother and a baby). Even though the airplane was expected to make regular radio contact, all communications ceased shortly after flying. More than 75 aircrafts went searching for the lost airplane, but the airplane and the passengers were gone for good. No-one or nothing ever found regarding the mystery.
What are the reasons for such disappearances? Alaska has a great deal of sparsely populated, open wide wilderness that is very often snowy with lots of ice. The average temperatures in the interior range from about 45 degrees to 75 degrees F (7 degrees to 24 degrees C) in the summer and about 20 to -10 degrees F (-7 to m-23 degrees C) in winter. But, at times, temperatures reach into the 90s F (about 34 degrees C) in the summer or drop into the -60s F (about -54 degrees) in winter.
The official nickname for Alaska is “The Last Frontier ”. The state is the last great wilderness in the United States of America in which civilization has encroached on only approximately 160,000 acres of its 365 million acres. This sum is less than 1/20th of 1 percent of the State, the remainder is still untouched; pristine wilderness.
There are major reasons why people go missing in Alaska. Such reasons include landslides, avalanches, fissuring glaciers, overflowing rivers. collapsing riverbanks, giant holes people can fall in, get severely injured and trapped; hidden caves people can have accidents in; deep, building size crevasses and rugged tall mountain peaks where crashed aircrafts and trapped hikers have been buried under a great, suffocating quickly moving snowfall; blizzard. Also, a great deal of dangerous wildlife abounds there that can attack, maim, kill, and could eat humans. Examples include grizzly bears, polar bears, moose, wolf packs, cougars, black bears, sharks-including great white sharks, and large alligators are in various waters, with other predators.
Another consideration is because Alaska has a big reputation for people who go missing: in any given year, 500-2000 people go missing, never to be seen again; there are going to be criminal people and gangs who commit murder in various harsh, covering up geographical areas to create an unsolved missing persons mystery. In known statistics, Alaska has the 5th highest murder rate in the USA with a rate of 10.6 murders per 100,000 residents.
And the state has the highest violent crime rate of any other state in the nation of 829 incidents per 100,000 residents.
If traveling to Alaska, visiting Alaska or if especially living there, be very careful for your own personal safety; take reasonable precautions.
