![]() ![]() Originally a movie serial and B-film device, this trope has been carried over to television by way of programs that mimicked or paid homage to those films, or to pulp fiction in general. There are tidal flats which have seen so many deaths the locals are tired of watching stupid people die, but it's not wholly clear how much that is getting stuck in one specific spot versus getting trapped some distance from dry ground on slow-to-traverse terrain or attempting to wait on an insecure bit of slightly higher ground as the tide comes in around you. More to the point, being a tidal flat, it's a case where people actually ARE at risk for their lives, since tides have this funny way of coming back in after going out. Viscosity decreases after an initial stress. The tide regularly refreshes the surface and smooth implies solid to people. In live action, budget and set-design constraints sometimes lead to a "quicksand pit" barely large enough to hold the actor.Īlthough not always strictly "sand", tidal flats (mudflats) have mud which is actually closer to the danger portrayed in fiction as quicksand. Writers are traditionally unfettered by such technicalities, placing them in the desert or away from a river or any apparent source of water, although a hidden spring could in theory create quicksand in surprising places. Okay, if you are weighed down by something you can't remove, you could sink, but that would even happen in boring, old regular water. Survival guides stress the importance of staying still if this starts to happen. Also it is possible to struggle badly enough in a panic that you actually do drag yourself down instead of up. While animals and people do die in quicksand, it's almost never from the sand or drowning-it's from exposure or dehydration after exhausting themselves struggling against the sand - with the right combination of sand, clay, water, and salt, it is nearly impossible to escape the stuff without help. In fact, real quicksand is so dense that you can't sink in it the usual advice for someone who finds themselves caught in deep quicksand is to simply relax and float on their back. In truth, quicksand (while real) isn't terribly common, and exerts none of its movie counterpart's mythical "sucking" power. Although most victims blunder blindly into quicksand, it sometimes seems that the merest touch of an extremity is enough to pull the unwary into its muddy and all-consuming depths like iron filings to a magnet. Quicksand is a common and deadly element of jungle and desert terrain, and its most dangerous feature is its ability to suck people and animals down and drown them in a malevolent blend of sand and water. ![]()
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