It has since disappeared from the mainstream psyche. There is a VICE documentary about quicksand fetishists: Quicksand FetishĪt the height of its popularity quicksand appeared in one out of 35 Hollywood films. 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. However the popularity of the old quicksand trope suggested quicksand was a disproportionate hazard, when I should have been warned instead about burying myself too deep in sand holes:

Though nowhere near as common as drownings, children dying in sand still happens. My high school friend’s older brother suffocated to death under a collapsed sandcastle on Nelson’s Tahunanui Beach in the 1970s at the age of nine. Quicksand warning at Tasmanian beach - but expert says threat is minimal, ABC News (Australia) A quick-thinking dog owner has described the moment she got caught in quicksand while trying to rescue her toy poodle at a beach in southern Tasmania as akin to the infamous swamp scene in the 1984 film The NeverEnding Story. “There wasn’t any suction stopping me from getting out but it felt like there was nothing stable for me to stand on”.

Sexy women sinking into quicksand