Just in time for the Bermuda Day holiday, a YouTube video explains in the simplest of formats, the history of Bermuda and how it developed its reinsurance industry.

The video quickly drew comments, including many from Bermudians, some referencing what it had right and others referencing what it had wrong. By this morning, barely a day after its release, the video already had 20,000 likes and no dislikes.

As part of the series Geography by Geoff, the latest episode Why 60,000 People Live on a Rock with Zero Resources is a little over 15 minutes long, but even takes the time to correct the typical geographical misplacement of the island in the Caribbean.

Oregon Public Broadcasting describes Geoff Gibson, who has a million subscribers, as a popular digital creator, geographer and former city planner based in Portland, Oregon.

“He creates engaging video essays, podcasts, and newsletters exploring population geography, urban planning, and how the world's physical and cultural landscapes work.”

The video describes Bermuda ‘s relationship with the United Kingdom as “highly unusual and totally critical to (the island’s) wealth”.

It said: “(This) extreme autonomy gave Bermuda a massive geopolitical superpower. Because they could write their own local laws, they could design their own tax code, and they decided they weren't going to charge any corporate income tax.

“This unique hybrid status — protected by the military might and stability of the British Empire, yet possessing total freedom to set their own financial rules — created the ultimate loophole in the global economy.”

It added: “But they didn't just become a generic, run-of-the-mill tax haven. They decided to specialise. They looked at their own history, at the hurricane that literally shipwrecked their founding fathers, and decided to monetise the one thing they knew better than anyone else on Earth: absolute catastrophic disaster.”

This was how the dated telling of Bermuda reinsurance began “the high-stakes, multibillion dollar safety net that keeps the global economy from collapsing every time the wind blows too hard”.

The author was clearly unaware of corporate income tax with this addition: “And where do the vast majority of the world's biggest property catastrophe reinsurance companies live? Right in the capital City of Hamilton, Bermuda. Because of their unique British overseas territory status, their lack of corporate income tax, and their proximity to the United States — which has the highest concentration of expensive coastal real estate in the world — Bermuda became the absolute epicentre of the global catastrophe market.”

There is clearly a mixture of fact and fiction, such as: “The wealth here is staggering. The roads are well-maintained, the infrastructure is incredibly resilient, and the standard of living is exceptionally high.

“When a hurricane hits Bermuda itself, the island barely blinks. Their white stepped limestone houses and underground water systems are built like fortresses, and their power grids are designed to snap back into action almost immediately.”