Man voluntarily gets stuck in quicksand to demonstrate how to escape it
As kids, I think we’ve all had a collective fear of getting stuck in quicksand. Movies like Indiana Jones and numerous cartoons including Timon & Pumbaa ingrained in us that if we were to ever fall into the perilous sludge, there was very little hope of escape.
Thankfully, a Redditor has recently shared a clip of a very brave man instructing the public on what to do if they ever find themselves stuck in the wet sand.
Some may watch in horror as the wetsuit-clad man, Chris, attempts to purposefully get himself stuck in the gloopy mud. “Generally speaking, if you go down past your knee, depending on [the mud’s] consistency, you could be there permanently,” the clip’s narrator is heard saying. “So don’t wiggle from leg to leg, trying to pull one leg out and then shoving the other leg in.”
The actual method to survive and avoid being sucked into quicksand is probably not what you’re expecting at all, as the narrator explained and Chris demonstrated, “Fall onto your back, spread all the way onto your back.” That’s right—become one with the mud.
He continued: “Now wiggle your legs out and work them upwards. If you ever find yourself stuck in mud, that’s the only way to get them out.”
This tutorial fits nicely along the series of tips on what to do if you’re ever attacked by a shark—the chances of which are very slim for both, but regrettably, never zero. But back to the quicksand, it seems that even seasoned wilderness explorers are wary of being sucked into the hazardous ground, as resident wild man Bear Grylls showed viewers on his show Man Vs. Wild what to do if they ever found themselves in that situation.
“[A] muddy bog is a place where the earth will literally suck you in,” he explained. “These holes have been known to swallow entire small off-road vehicles. The reason they are so dangerous is because if you go into them, the more you struggle, the more it sucks you into it.”
The adventurer then proceeded to jump feet first into the bog, immediately sinking up to his hips. Rather you than us, Grylls. “Each muscle I pull creates suction that pulls me down deeper. A technique for getting out of this, if you’ve got a stick, is to use that to create more surface area to be able to put your weight on and try and wriggle your chest onto it,” he said.
Grylls wrapped up the tutorial with one final piece of advice: “Once you’re on the surface, just monkey crawl until you hit solid ground.”
While these clips should make us feel more confident about encountering these situations, it just makes me want to never venture out of the house ever again. Thanks, but no thanks.
