A shark swims slowly and serenely below the Bismarck seconds before it sinks into the depths of the ocean. Seemingly out of nowhere, the battleship tilts and falls; her prow crashes against the bottom of the sea. Her hull is flooded before briefly resurfacing out of the water. Then the voiceover says, “Oh! Ay, ay, ay, ay! Boom!” The Bismarck breaks in half and sinks.
This was not the actual end of the Bismarck, but a simulated wreck by Alex Reifsnyder, a 27-year-old retail supervisor from Pennsylvania. Reifsnyder uses the Floating Sandbox physics simulator to sink ships with tidal waves, icebergs, and lightning for between one and two hours most nights. On his TikTok page @an_angry_flyy167,000 loyal followers do not get tired.
Even they don’t seem to know exactly what attracts them. A comment under a video from October reads: “I don’t know what I’m watching…and why…but I still come back every day.” Though some are soundtracked with slow, ominous music and others upbeat pop, all of Reifsnyder’s videos seem to capture the terror of an eerie expanse of ocean that has the power to crush you and drag you under.
The comments section reveals that viewers can’t help but imagine themselves on board: “Imagine your ship going completely airborne,” says one, while others quip, “I’m fine, I was wearing my seatbelt.” and “I would survive.”
There is also a clear appetite for more destruction: “Can you add fire or an explosion?” asks a commenter. Another asks: “Could you drop it from the sky into the water?”
Questions and answers
What is the Shipwrecked series?
Show
There are lost ships 3m below the waves, and with new technology finally allowing us to explore them, Guardian Seascape is dedicating a series to what is being found: the secret stories, the hidden treasures and the lessons they teach. From glimpses of historic shipwrecks like the Titanic and Ernest Shackleton’s doomed Endurance, to slave ships like the Clotilda to Spanish galleons filled with looted South American gold that confront us with our troubled history, the shipwrecks are time capsules that hold clues as to who we are. .
But they are also ocean players in their own right, home to huge colonies of marine life. They are also victims of the same threats facing the ocean: invasive species eat away at their hulls, and acidification causes them to slowly disintegrate. Shipwrecks are mirrors that show us not only who we have been, but also what the future holds in a rapidly warming globe.
The attraction of these shipwrecks has been a boon to science, shedding light on a part of the planet that has long been shrouded in mystery. “If shipwrecks are the sirens that draw us into the depths, they encourage exploration of what really is the last frontier on the planet,” says James Delgado of shipwreck company Search Inc. “A frontier we really don’t know about much. ”
Chris Michael and Laura Paddison, Seascape editors
More than 1.7 million people Viewed the Bismarck go boom in early October, and the Reifsnyder most popular video it has 21m views. In it, an incredibly tall wave approaches the Bismarck as Hans Zimmer’s Cornfield Chase from the movie Interstellar plays. The ship rises into the air; her stern crashes into the ocean and breaks in half. The water is poured into the boat. In pieces, she sinks to the bottom of the sea.
“I have always been interested in the Titanic, the Britannic, the Lusitania. I have seen many videos of the history of these ships,” says Reifsnyder, who began wrecking ships in July 2022 after two years of not getting fans by streaming the shooter Call of Duty.
Finding fans hasn’t been a problem this time. “A lot of people find it really satisfying,” she says. “It’s actually quite therapeutic to watch ships sink. In my broadcasts, I create a very relaxing and inclusive environment for everyone and everyone.”
Initially, Reifsnyder’s viewers were mostly men aged 15 to 35, but recently others have joined. “I’ve noticed more women coming in and looking,” she says, “I even have people who speak languages I can’t even recognize.”
Reifsnyder is bilingual and occasionally speaks Spanish on broadcast. “A lot of people tell me that I have a great storytelling voice,” she says. Her commentary ranges from deadpan and descriptive to titillatingly absurd: “She’s going to be shot through the air!”, “My God, on the spikes she’s going!”
Dr. Coltan Scrivner, an expert on morbid curiosity, argues that what keeps people coming back is that it’s a form of learning. “Humans, like other animals, have a built-in cognitive bias that encourages them to pay attention to situations that can inform them of threats or danger,” says the research scientist at the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Scrivner says that such “threat information” is especially attractive “when the cost of searching is low, such as when watching the news, playing a game, or watching a simulation.”
“Our minds see a simulated shipwreck as an opportunity to learn important and consequential information at very little cost. This makes it difficult to look the other way.”
Reifsnyder also sees his content as educational, not about mocking tragedies. Unlike other games, there is no “no one aboard” ships in Floating Sandbox, and there is no population counter to tick when a ship sinks.
“This is all about history, and we’re learning physics here,” says Reifsnyder. “Hydrodynamic physics is taken into account in the game, thermodynamics is taken into account, gravity is taken into account.” Or put another way: uh oh, uh oh, uh oh! Boom!
