Quicksand

A lot of people have died on the silver screen from being trapped in quicksand. In the 1960s, almost 3% of films featured someone sinking in clay, mud or sand. However, this is extremely rare, if it has ever happened, and it is very difficult to find any documented cases of people drowning in quicksand even when they struggle. The reason is that you can never completely become submerged in quicksand because quicksand is much denser than water so you’ll easily float. If you relax you will float and sink no more than up your waist or lower chest. In addition, quicksand pits are rarely more than a few feet deep. Another misconception spread by the silver screen is that quicksand appear in the desert. However, quicksand usually appears near water.

Quicksand is thick and heavy, and it is extremely difficult to get out once you are stuck. The best way to get out of quicksand on your own is to slowly lean back so that the weight of your body is distributed over a wider area and then do back and forth movements as if you are swimming. It will take a long time though, so expect to take it very slowly and gently.

That does not mean that getting stuck in quicksand is not dangerous. There are documented cases where people have gotten stuck in quicksand and there was no one around to help them and they couldn’t get out on their own and eventually died from thirst, exposure, or attacking animals. Another dangerous situation is when the quicksand is located on a beach near the shore. There are cases where a person was stuck in quicksand, and the tide came in resulting in a drowning.

There are situations in which the dangers associated with being submerged in quicksand are real, and that is what is called “grain entrapment” or “grain engulfment”. Several people are killed each year when they become submerged in grain and cannot escape. This happens in grain elevators and silos. So don’t jump into grain silos.

I should say that I do not consider this a super fact because it is not very important information, sort of trivia, and I also don’t think there is enough reliable information out there about this. However, I think it is interesting information that relates to me a little bit (see next section). To remind you, this is what I consider a super fact.

A super fact is:

  • An important fact that can be simply stated.
  • It is very surprising, shocking, widely disputed, misunderstood, or mind-blowing.
  • Yet it is true with a very high degree of certainty.
Outdoor photo of a cute young woman wearing a safari outfit sinking deep into the ground as like it was jungle quicksand, the ground turned into sandy milkshake mud, with a quicksand sign at the edge.
Woman sinking in quicksand Shutterstock Asset id: 2576940253 by Shutterstock AI

My Quicksand Experience

When I was about 6-7 years old, I had my own experience with quicksand or at least a mudpuddle that acted very much like quicksand. I should say that back then neighbors were friends, and your lawn was everyone’s lawn, and the kids in the neighborhood played with each other. The kids roamed the neighborhood and the forest. We threw stones at imaginary witches, screamed at moose, broke into barns to jump in the hay, ate dirt and cheerfully watched the schoolhouse burn down. There were no cellphones, doomscrolling, political keyboard warriors, online predators or overprotective parents. Kids were happy back then, but life was less safe.

I was with a group of kids, including a couple of kids a bit older than I was. We came upon a funny-looking mudpuddle, about two feet wide, and I decided to step in to check it out. I don’t remember why. Maybe I wanted to impress. Maybe I was curious. It only took a few seconds for me to sink in to right above my knees and then it was impossible to get out. The mud/quicksand held my legs in an iron grip. The fact that I stopped sinking around my knees might have been because my feet had hit solid ground. My friends tried to pull me up but could not get me up.

The older kids told me not to struggle and one of them ran to get my parents. They came running as fast as they could. My dad gripped me around the waist and slowly, bit by bit, he was able to pull me up. The rubber boots I was wearing stayed in the mud/quicksand. They might still be there like a fossil to be found by future inhabitants of our planet. Was it some sort of strange mud, or quicksand? I don’t know, but I remember being afraid. It taught me one lesson. Don’t step in funny looking mud puddles. In fact, maybe you shouldn’t step in mud at all unless you have to.

To see a list of the Super Facts click here

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

98 thoughts on “Quicksand”

    1. It is a less pleasant memory that stuck with me. This was northern Sweden, which I think is similar to Alaska in many ways. My guess is that most X and boomers in both Europe and North America had a less safe but freer childhood.

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        1. Yes I think so. The arctic circle goes through, the midnight sun and a few weeks of no sunrise at the very north, cold winters (sometimes -40) and mountains. However, Alaska has bigger mountains, bigger brown bears, and I think northern Sweden is a little warmer.

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          1. I used to live in the Northwest Territories but worked all over the north (at times in Alaska, too) – Canada above 60° N latitude is enormous comprising 3,867,261 sq km and three territories not including Labrador – and the geographical differences can be huge. I’ve visited northern Sweden and would say that some parts of northern Canada resemble northern Sweden while other parts definitely don’t.

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  2. How frightening, Thomas you must have been really scared…Interesting about quicksand and as you said films have probably stoked that myth…Bogs are more dangerous and grain silos my grandad was farmer and we were not allowed to play near the grain silos because of the dangers of falling in…in fact when they are filled up you can see how if you fell in how quickly you would disappear…

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    1. Thank you Carol. I was frightened but at least I had other children with me trying to help me. I can’t imagine if I had been alone. You are right bogs and grain silos are definitely more dangerous. You actually fully sunk in to those. I can certainly understand your grandad’s caution.

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    1. Yes in Sweden, when I was young, we watched a whole bunch of old movies, and those movies frequently featured people sinking into quicksand. There’s a joke, Hell is where the Germans are the police, the French are the engineers, the British do the cooking, Finnish is the language, and the Swedes make the TV programs. Like you say, deaths from getting stuck in quicksand are very rare and getting submerged seems to be impossible, but grain silos and bogs that’s another story.

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  6. It would be horrible to die of exposure or animal attack while stuck in quicksand! I remember trying to make “quicksand” in muddy spots in the schoolyard by stamping and wiggling my feet. It could get to ankle deep, but no one ever got stuck.

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    1. Yes you are right. I am not sure how much better dying from exposure or an animal while stuck in quicksand is compared to be submerged. Still, it is a relief that getting submerged seems impossible. About your mud puddle quicksand creations, I am happy no one died.

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    1. Yes I agree, very scary. However, water puddles aren’t 100% safe either. On another occasion while walking home from kindergarten I stepped into a water puddle, out of curiousity. It was much deeper than I thought. That times I was fully submerged but it was easy to get back out. I had to walk home in wet clothes. I guess I was the puddle boy.

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    1. I was curious about your comment so I quickly checked Anchorage Daily News, Associated Press, Explorerweb, National Park Service, Wikipedia, and ChatGPT, and they all say that the mud flats in Alaska are like quicksand but that the people who died got stuck up to their waist or limbs as with quicksand and then the tide came in, which is what killed them. I found no numbers but it seems like people die more often in the mud flats than from quicksand. I certainly would avoid the area. But I admit I don’t know much about it.

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    1. Yes, part 1 : Unlike what many movies depict you cannot get entirely submerged in quicksand. You float with the quicksand up to your waist. However, it is very difficult to get out on your own so sometimes people die from exposure or animal attacks, or if the quicksand is near the beach, they drown when the tide comes in. There is a way to get out of quicksand though, and that is to carefully lean back and very slowly try to get your legs up and then float and swim on your back.

      Part 2: When I was a kid I got stuck up to my knees in a mud puddle that might have been quicksand. It acted like it. Luckily other children and my parents helped me get out of there.

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      1. Thanks Thomas much appreciated 👏 I have seen so many tv shows where people get stuck in quicksand and keep sinking and then going under. I’m glad to know that isn’t necessary true. Wow what a scary experience for a kid. I’m so glad that you got out. Great information 👍

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  13. Hey this was interesting and good to know. At least it can remove some worries people have about running into quick sand. That would have been scary as a kid getting stick up to your knees. My dad and I ran into that once by a creek at my grandparents’ old farm. He got stuck but was able to pull himself out. Went up to his thighs! It was freaky, but like you say, it doesn’t usually go so high that you would drown in it. But it would also not be good to get stuck with no one around to help you, as you illustrated.

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  14. Oh my that story you had just reminded me of the years I lived in Alaska as a teen and would go to the inlet and walk out as far as we could with NO idea we weren’t suppose to because people die out there.. we never knew except the few shoes we lost in the mud.. then one year a horror story.. a newly wed walked out mezermized by one another they stood too long and sunk.. he got out but no helicopter or any machinery could get her out.. the tide came in slowly and it took her while everyone watched unable to get her out.. the entire group and EMTs and everyone had so many mental breakdowns , some lost jobs and worse from the travesty.. I’ve often thought and I am so grateful I never sank or got stuck.. we had no idea the inlet sucked u down under from the tides pull and many died. Later after that they put up signs but for years we did that ughhhh makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it.. I love mid puddles and taught my kids how to be the best puddle stompers and passed it to grandkids but never imagined a puddle could ever be dangerous too. Yikes!!!😱

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    1. Violet brought up the mud flats in Alaska in a comment above. I admit I did not know about them until today. I googled it a bit and I came upon the story you are telling. It is so tragic and horrific. However, there were many other tragic stories about the mud flats. Lots of people have died there. The mud flats seem to be very similar to quicksand, only much more dangerous. Thank you for the story Kerri.

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      1. So glad I lived through those years .. sometimes I wonder how I made it to have grandkids doing so many things like that and had no idea the dangers..I’ve been a nature girl my whole life and I can say by far that is probably the most dangerous one I did MANY TIMES and had zero idea .

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  15. Thank you for diminishing my quicksand fears from a childhood of watching TV in the 60s. The closest I’ve ever come to anything like this was carrying a canoe through sucking mud at low tide in the intracoastal waterway. I will definitely stay away from grain silos.

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    1. Yes it is good to know that quicksand will not suck you in entirely and on top of it there is often solid ground beneath so you may not go far. It is still dangerous though because you can get stuck if you are by yourself, and being stuck might be trouble. Grain silos though, are a lot more dangerous.

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        1. I think it is a good idea not to hiking alone. It is not just getting stuck in quicksand, which is rare, but you trip and hurt yourself, run into dangerous animals, or dangerous people. When I was a kid I went into the forest a lot by myself but Swedish forests are in general less dangerous than American forests, well at least back then. Now brown bears and even wolf packs have become common again.

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  16. As it turns out, I got caught in quicksand near the Green River up in Northern Colorado some years go. I didn’t go very far down but I did have to remove my boots and my wife helped pull me to more solid ground. I was then able to pull my boots out of the quick sand. It actually wasn’t very “quick” but I was stuck pretty firmly and it was pretty scary for a few minutes. Fortunately, I we had a happy ending to our encounter.

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      1. There actually had been warnings about quicksand at the Dinosaur National Monument visitor center which we had just been at. My first reaction was just being perplexed at what was happening and how no matter what I did I couldn’t get free of the “mud” and just kept sinking. I untied my shoes and my wife reached out and I grabbed her hand. When I reached over and grabbed my boots, I suddenly realized that I’d experienced quicksand for the first time.

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          1. The part of the story I neglected to mention was that the main campground had been full, so we were camping in a more remote wilderness area, which is why there weren’t signs aside from the general warning about hiking along the river if you went to the wilderness camping area.

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  17. I didn’t know that drowning in quicksand was a fallacy perpetuated by the movie industry. Still, dying from exposure or animal attack sounds just as bad! And your childhood experience must have been terribly frightening, Thomas. 😬

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    1. It is not the first time I heard that but I thought it was an interesting thing to bring up. However, I did not make it a super fact because it is kind of trivia and I did not feel I found enough reliable online sources to really make a solid case. However, I do believe it is true. The sources I found were not many but they all agree that drowning in quicksand is not really possible, or at least very difficult. That experience I had getting stuck in mud/quicksand was awful but at least I had friends and my parents eventually came. I was not alone.

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  18. Thomas, that must have been a scary experience when you were a child. When I was a teen, I got one foot stuck in quicksand on a mudflat once, and the tide was coming in. I was able to pull my foot out of my shoe then dig my flexible sneaker out. The sand was concrete by then, and when I had that shoe out, my other foot was stuck. I got that foot out the same way and ran! By the time I got to the shore, I turned around and looked, and a bore tide of frigid Alaskan water had already covered the area.

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    1. Wow that was a very scary experience. I have to admit that when I posted this I did not know about the mud flats in Alaska, but other commentors brought it up and I googled it. I found out that the mud flats are like quicksand but appear to be more dangerous than “regular” quicksand. A lot of people have died from getting stuck and then the tide came in. I did not find many accidents of people dying from quicksand elsewhere but there were many causalties in the mud flats in Alaska. If I ever visit Alaska I will certainly stay away from the mud flats.

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  19. That was a nasty experience you had a child… And no wonder you remember it so vividly…
    I know my sister got stuck in a bog when we were out walking once in Derbyshire .. Her wellingtons came off, stuck in the bog, as I pulled her out, she was screaming like a banshee!…. 🙂 Guess who had to go retrieve the wellington boots?… Yes I did… As we dare not go home without them 🙂 thankfully the tops were visible.. My sister around 7 at the time and and I was 13… 🙂

    Thank you for those interesting facts Thomas about quicksand and sharing your own personal story… Lessons are often learnt the hard way 🙂 xx

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    1. Wow that was a scary and dangerous experience. I cannot believe you went back and retrieved the boots. That seems dangerous. As I was reading about quicksand and how you cannot entirely sink into quicksand (you easily float) I came across information about bogs, and unlike quicksand it is possible to entirely sink into bogs and be submerged, even though it is not very common. You are right “”lessons are often learnt the hard way”.

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  20. Thank you for the information! I’m glad your experience wasn’t any worse. I’ve heard of people sinking in sand and disappearing in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and places like that. The same with bogs in the UK. Don’t know how true the stories are, though. I know what you mean about childhood in the past. We were lucky to survive some of the stuff we did.

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    1. Thank you Dawn. I don’t know about the sand in Saudi Arabia but I came across information about bogs and unlike quicksand it is possible to entirely sink into a bog. Quicksand is so dense that you very easily float, bogs less so, and you can sink further and drown. I did not read about any specific cases though.

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  21. Based on everything I saw on TV and in the movies as a kid I expected a lot more trouble with quicksand than I actually encountered. I’m glad the mud didn’t drag you all the way down. I’m still not over what happened to Artax in The Never-Ending Story …

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    2. I guess me too. You can’t sink in so you get submerged and on top of that there is often solid ground not too far beneath the surface. That seems to have been my case. However, there are other things you can sink into and become submerged.

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    1. Thank you Pooja. Luckily, what the movies depict is mostly myth. Most of time, as in my case, you just get stuck. You can’t sink in entirely and be submerged and in addition most quicksand is shallow with ground beneath. However, being stuck can be dangerous too if you are alone, which I luckily wasn’t.

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        1. Yes that made a big difference. However, since it was solid ground below I would just have been stuck for a long time if I had been alone. They would have eventually found me and there were no dangerous animals in that forest at the time. But it would have been much worse. Now a day there could be brown bears in that forest.

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  24. at the start of this, I was wishing someone had told me all this when I was a small child watching old horror movies — but wait – by the end of this there is much to fear. amazing all the ways we survive this thing called life lol

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    1. Yes Quicksand was all over the silver screen and depicted in horrible and exaggerated ways. You can get stuck though and need help even though it is very rare. We did all kinds of dangerous things kids but here we are.

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  25. What a fun story, Thomas. Kids … sounds like my childhood … fun, a little reckless, and not much thinking about consequences when jumping in. I could just picture you stuck in the mud.

    My husband and I read the post together. We’ve both seen those movies and had no idea that drowning in quicksand is extremely rare. Good to know. Lol. Thanks for the laughs.

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    1. Thank you so much Diane. Drowning in quicksand might even be impossible but getting stuck is not. If you get stuck on the beach and you are alone, the tide could come in and you could drown, and then if you get attacked by animals. I am glad I had friends with me when I got stuck but even if not I probably would not have been in any real danger. There were no dangerous animals in that forest at the time. Yes times were different. We were more free but there were more dangers.

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  28. This is you, Thomas? I feel like such a dope. I followed a link Diana left in comments on my post about quicksand and had no idea who had written this article until the end. Excellent article, by the way. Cheers!

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        1. There are a lot of movies that depict things in a very unrealistic manner, and it annoys me when I have to suspend disbelief too much or something false is stated or depicted. However, there are some movies that are quite realistic. Despite being science fiction depicting intersteallar travel, I found Interstellar to be mostly believable.

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