They were more afraid of things like aliens, zombies, ghosts, and dinosaurs. “I usually don’t think about it,” said one. Interviewing a class of fourth graders, writer Dan Engber discovered that most understood the concept, but didn’t find it particularly worrisome. But these days, quicksand can’t even scare an 8-year-old. It held a vise-grip on our imaginations, from childish sandbox games to grown-up anxieties about venturing into unknown lands. One genuine danger is that a person who is immobilized in quicksand could be engulfed and drowned by an incoming tide-quicksands often occur in tidal areas-but even these types of accidents are very rare.“For many of us, quicksand was once a real fear,” write the producers at Radio Lab: Physicists have calculated that the force required to extract your foot from quicksand at a rate of one centimeter per second is roughly equal to the force needed to lift a medium-sized car. In fact, slow back-and-forth movements can actually let water into the cavity around a trapped limb, loosening the quicksand’s hold. If you do find yourself stuck in quicksand, the best idea is to lean back so that the weight of your body is distributed over a wider area.
Our legs are pretty dense, so they may sink, but the torso contains the lungs, and thus is buoyant enough to stay out of trouble. People and animals can get stuck in it, but they don’t get sucked down to the bottom-they float on the surface. That’s because quicksand is denser than the human body. Quicksand-that is, sand that behaves as a liquid because it is saturated with water-can be a mucky nuisance, but it’s basically impossible to die in the way that is depicted in movies. Is quicksand actually as dangerous as advertised? But an Internet search for deaths by quicksand won’t turn up much. Given how often quicksand deaths and near-deaths occur in film, you would think we would be seeing news about quicksand tragedies in real life. Quicksand was probably the number-one hazard faced by silver-screen adventurers, followed by decaying rope bridges and giant clams that could hold a diver underwater. Unless there’s a vine to grab a hold of, he or she disappears without a trace (except maybe a hat floating sadly on the surface). The unlucky victim starts sinking down into the muck struggling only makes it worse. It used to be a standard trope in action movies, although you don’t see it much these days: a patch of apparently solid ground in the jungle that, when stepped on, turns out to have the consistency of cold oatmeal. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!Įncyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Patrick O'Neill Riley.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.COVID-19 Portal While this global health crisis continues to evolve, it can be useful to look to past pandemics to better understand how to respond today.Student Portal Britannica is the ultimate student resource for key school subjects like history, government, literature, and more.From tech to household and wellness products. Britannica Explains In these videos, Britannica explains a variety of topics and answers frequently asked questions.This Time in History In these videos, find out what happened this month (or any month!) in history.#WTFact Videos In #WTFact Britannica shares some of the most bizarre facts we can find.Demystified Videos In Demystified, Britannica has all the answers to your burning questions.Britannica Classics Check out these retro videos from Encyclopedia Britannica’s archives.
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