(orchestral music)
- Do you live in constant
fear of dying in quicksand?
Well sure, of course we all do.
But you have to carry on with your life
and I'm here to make that easier for you.
See, despite its fearsome reputation
as a swallower of hapless adventurers
and exotic places like Gilligan's Island
or, more arcanely, Fantasy Island,
quicksand is actually
something of a little baby lamb
of a hazard if you know
how to treat it right.
See, quicksand is merely
a combination of clay
and sand and water and wherever these
three things are present,
you can have quicksand.
But mostly you're gonna
find it in places like
along river sides or at the beach even
or in a marsh or a swampland,
you know, the usual.
So quicksand is formed whenever water
enters a bit of sand and
a little bit of clay,
don't forget, and doesn't go away.
It doesn't evaporate.
It just stays there.
The presence of water
destabilizes the sand
creating a colloid hydrogel
and if you or Gilligan
stand on a colloid hydrogel,
you're going to sink.
What saves you is buoyancy.
Simply put, water has a density of about
one gram per cubic centimeter.
The human body has an average density of
a little less than that, which means
the average human will float in water.
With me so far?
Well quicksand has a density that's about
double that of water, so it's about
two grams per cubic centimeter,
which means a human being will float
on quicksand like it's nobody's business.
The key is remaining calm.
Despite what most people think,
quicksand pits are usually
just a few feet deep.
So let's just cut to the chase here.
Let's just get to the nightmare scenario.
Say that you have fallen into,
for all intents and
purposes, a bottomless pit
of quicksand and you're
sunk up to your waist.
You obviously can't feel
the bottom with your feet.
You're in a delicate situation.
So what do you do?
Do you thrash about and try to pull
your legs out as hard as you can?
No, you don't do that
because it would require
about the same force as it would take
to lift up a sedan to pull
your leg out of quicksand
and, speaking of cars, you wouldn't want
your friends to tie a rope around you
and the other end to a car to pull you out
because it would pull you clean in half.
What you wanna do is gently
wiggle your legs free.
What this does is allow water to seep into
the space that's created
by your leg movements,
which in turn reduces the viscosity
or stickiness of the
quicksand around your leg.
Eventually, you should be able to gently
pull your leg free and once you do,
you wanna bring it up to the top
of the quicksand and lay back.
What this does is
increase your surface area
giving you an even better
opportunity to float.
Once you have all of your appendages
on the top of the
quicksand and you're just
kind of floating there, roll over
and calmly and gently pedal
your way to the shore.
Then leave that place,
never to return ever again.
So thanks for watching.
Now you know how to survive quicksand
and if you wanna know
about more survival videos,
give us some ideas down
in the comments below
and also, don't miss a life
saving moment of Brain Stuff.
Visit our awesome website
brainstuffshow.com.
