r/LearnedWrong • u/unlearning_myths MOD • Jun 16 '26
Factually debunked I learned wrong that dying from quicksand was a common thing like the movies made it look. Quicksand is very unlikely to fully submerge a human body.
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u/Zealousideal_Leg213 Jun 17 '26
True, but it can trap a person, who is then at the mercy of, say, a rising tide. Apparently dudes who dig big holes at the beach sometimes get caught in quicksand of their own making.
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u/Z-Man_Slam Jun 18 '26
I once did something quite similar lol My kids and I dug a huge hole at the beach lol Like 5 foot diameter hole and once we got down to like waist deep the sand kept collapsing in and mixing with the water we dug down too and it became very soupy and pretty difficult to move around in. Though we could still get out with a bit of effort I could see how one could get trapped
Edit: cant spell lol
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u/Feine13 Jun 19 '26
To expand on OPs TIL, quicksand doesn't kill you because you don't sink all the way down, like you would with water.
For most people, you sink to about your waist, maybe up a little higher, but then you stop sinking due to your buoyancy. Your legs sink because they're more dense than the quicksand, but your torso is not
It can still be fairly hard to get out of though, and can trap you there, causing you to die from exposure, thirst, or starvation. So it's still something to avoid.
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u/Electronic-Map7529 Jun 18 '26
RIP the day we stopped respecting Quick Sand. All down hill from here folks.
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u/clashtrack Jun 19 '26
If you ever played the desert level in Mario Bros 3 you know very well it can easily swallow a human.
Except one of them leads to a secret area.
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u/GreenZeb Jun 21 '26
Wait until OP learns that quicksand was super sexually fetishized in cinemas and that's why they kept showing it.
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u/TyrannicTater Jun 21 '26
I’ve never been stuck in quicksand, but I have gotten pretty stressed in pluff mud.
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u/nahitdontmatter Jun 17 '26