This theory presumes Atlantis itself was fictional, but the story of its demise was inspired by an actual historical event: the breaching of the Bosporus by the Mediterranean Sea and subsequent flooding of the Black Sea, around 5600 B.C. At the time, the Black Sea was a freshwater lake half its current size.

While the story of Atlantis is widely considered by historians and archaeologists to be a philosophical allegory created by the Greek philosopher Plato around 360 B.C., many theories attempt to link its "wiping out" to a real-world cataclysm. In Plato's accounts, Timaeus and Critias, he describes a hubristic naval power that sank into the ocean in a single day and night of "fire and earthquakes" after a failed attempt to invade Athens. The most prominent scientific candidate for a real-life inspiration is the Thera (Santorini) eruption around 1600 B.C. This massive volcanic explosion triggered devastating tsunamis and ash clouds that crippled the Minoan civilization on Crete, potentially serving as the blueprint for the Atlantis myth. Other theories suggest the rising sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age or a massive tectonic shift in the Atlantic or Mediterranean. In 2026, modern marine geology continues to search for sunken structures, but the consensus remains that Atlantis was a fictional device used by Plato to illustrate his political theories on the "ideal state" versus the corrupting nature of imperial power.