Quicksand Sucks: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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{{quote|''"What is it that's not exactly water, and it ain't exactly earth?"''|'''Bart''', ''[[Blazing Saddles]]''}}
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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. 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.
In truth, quicksand (while real) isn't terribly common, and exerts none of its movie counterpart's mythical "sucking" power. 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. While animals and people ''do'' die in quicksand, it's almost never from the sand or
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.
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* Occurs in Book 7 of ''[[The Hardy Boys]] Casefiles'', ''Deathgame''. Joe starts sinking in the quicksand and knows enough to float on it, but then has to force himself to sink below the surface to hide from his attacker. The caked mud later serves him as improvised camouflage.
* ''[[Sherlock Holmes|The Hound of the Baskervilles]]'' uses the swamp version, which is dangerous to enter if if you know the way, and nigh impossible to traverse without a guide.
* In one of the [[Guilty Pleasure|smaller, chapter]] ''[[Dinotopia]]'' books, Magnolia and Paddlefoot, her dinosaur companion, get mired in quicksand. However, the author has done their
* The Shivering Sand in ''[[The Moonstone]]'' by Wilkie Collins. Dangerous, but not an impossible trap. It's used by a certain character to {{spoiler|hide an incriminating piece of evidence, using a locked box and a chain, and to commit suicide}}.
* ''[[The Neverending Story (novel)|The Neverending Story]]'' contains a particularly charming scene in which Atreyu's [[Sapient Steed]] Artax sinks to his death in quicksand in the [[Swamps Are Evil|Swamp of Sadness]]. It is [[Hand Wave|explained]], however, that Artax' sinking [[Faux Symbolism|was not due to quicksand, but sadness]].
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** Adventure OA7 ''Test of the Samurai'' has several patches in the other-dimensional plane of Qui.
* Several Classic ''[[Traveller]]'' adventures have this as a possible encounter on alien planets.
** ''Twilight's Peak'' has quicksand as a possible encounter in wetlands on the planet Fulacin. If [[PC
** In the Double Adventure ''Marooned/Marooned Alone'', [[PC
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