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Does quicksand actually exist4/15/2024 ![]() Just about everyone can relate to this feeling at some time or another. It’s sort of like quicksand, the more we fight it, the more stuck we feel and faster we sink. It’s like being pulled down deeper and deeper, swallowed up by a sinking feeling. ![]() What does it feel like to get stuck in quicksand? Exhaustion is the biggest risk, considering the amount of energy it can take to untangle oneself from the waterlogged soil. In reality, quicksand is very rarely more than a few feet deep, making it more of a messy nuisance than a life-threatening hazard. … The friction between the sand particles is much-reduced, meaning it can’t support your weight anymore and at first you do sink. The ground looks solid, but when you step on it the sand begins to liquefy. Quicksand usually consists of sand or clay and salt that’s become waterlogged, often in river deltas. 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. How many tablespoons does it take to drown?.What does it feel like to get stuck in quicksand?.The more you can distribute your the weight, the more easily you can get yourself out of a very sticky situation. If you ever find yourself in something like it, you want to lay yourself out on the top as flat as possible and crawl out. Shockingly, the horse was unharmed from the entire experience and the owner brought him around the next day to thank me. ![]() I think most things that get stuck in quicksand don’t drown, they probably die of exposure, exhaustion or hypothermia. The mud exerts such a weight against everything that you can’t get out of it once you’re too deep. The horse would have never of gotten out without a helicopter, he would’ve had to been euthanized. If we distributed our weight out we didn’t sink ourselves. The owner was on the other side keeping pressure on the lead line to help me keep his head above water. ![]() It is nasty stuff, I finally sat on the bottom of it and then laid the horses head in my lap with his nose in the air. We had to continually yank our legs out of the mud, as we were continually sinking. We kept his head above water until they brought a sling in to hoist him out with a helicopter. It’s not really sand, it’s this mucky, sticky bottom that is very thick, suspended mud with other particulate matter and organic matter. Quicksand doesn’t keep going down down down. I called someone I knew could get decent real help and then I climbed in the water with the owner. They had been stuck there for over an hour and no rescue was coming. Owner was standing in the water next to his horse, water was only 1/2 way to the owners knees. I was riding my horse and came across a large draft horse (2,000 lbs) up to his back in quicksand. I have personally had the experience of dealing with quicksand. So maybe you did get some good advice, just never ended up in that situation! I've also seen quicksand on large construction sites where the soil was dug up and filled in and then became water saturated. I read a few years back, that quicksand is common in the estuaries of the river Thames, where it goes to the ocean in the UK. There are places in the world where things like quicksand are around and people deal with it on a regular basis. What you have to consider here, is just because something is outside your experience, it's not outside the experience of other people. If I had not managed to get out of there, the tide would have come in, I would have drowned and the only trace of me likely to have been found was my car, miles away in the parking area. The tidal creek I had waded up, was in mangroves. I had hiked through the woods from a parking area and had worked my way up the coast fishing and had not seen another living soul for hours. I waded up a tidal creek at low tide and sank to my armpits. I was fishing in a coastal wildlife refuge. I'd go anywhere, any time and thought it was fun. I grew up playing in the woods, then did that land surveying work for 25 years and literally did not give a shit. I have posted this before, but I had a bad habit of going out into wilderness areas by myself. You can get out of it, but it involves laying your upper body down in it, and using that as a base to work your legs out. I encountered it doing land surveying work. If you get stuck at low tide and the tide comes in, you could drown. Where it's dangerous, is it often occurs in tidal waters. You're not going to slowly sink out of sight. It's super saturated soil that takes on liquid properties.
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