Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.
Like many great tomes of history, Be Amazing is largely meant to be read as allegory. You (hopefully) can’t inject the gooey center of yourself into your neighbor and take over his brain, but you can take the story of the sacculina as a parable showing you how mooching should be done.There are, however, a few entries that offer more immediate, real-world-useful information. This is one of them.
How to Crawl out of Quicksand
Bad Idea: Trust the Movies
Do this, and you’re liable to end up thinking that quicksand is something that only happens in the jungle or the desert, and that the average patch has no discernible bottom. But quicksand, as it turns out, isn’t some Lovecraftian entity come to devour human souls. It’s really just your average run-of-the-mill sand and clay that’s been saturated with water, usually from an underground spring. Technically, you don’t even need sand–any old find-grained soil will do. According to the United States Geological Survey, quicksand can pop up just about anywhere. It could be waiting for you, right now, out in the backyard. On the plus side, though, that stuff about it being bottomless is also bunk. Most patches of quicksand would barely reach reach up to your waist, let alone be deep enough to cover your head. So before you start screaming for help, it might be a good idea to just try standing up. Unless, you know, you like being made fun of by emergency response crews.
Good Idea: Know Your Physics
Getting unstuck from quicksand is really a Vulcan-esque endeavor, requiring rationality, intelligence and emotional distance. Unfortunately, the most common response to sinking thigh-deep into what previously appeared to be solid ground is to freak out like Captain Kirk at an intergalactic bikini contest. You must stay cool. This information should help. In 2005, researchers from the University of Amsterdam announced the results of their research on quicksand. According to their report in Nature, the human body is actually much less dense than quicksand. Meaning that, under normal circumstances, a person in quicksand should really just bob around like buoy on the ocean. No heroic effort required. Problems only set in when you struggle, which stirs up the sand and water mixture, making it more liquid and you more likely to sink. But, while surviving the pit is easy, getting out is another story. Because quicksand is so viscous, it’s difficult for air to penetrate it. Thus, when you move your arm or leg, air can’t fill the spot where you once were and a partial vacuum forms. This makes it extremely difficult to pull yourself out of quicksand, even if you are moving slowly and deliberately. In fact, one of the true dangers of quicksand is exhaustion. Even removing one leg from the muck might make a lone hiker too tired to get back to camp and could open them up to attacks from wild animals or the perils of bad weather. Quicksand: It’s a good reason to do things with friends.
I would rescue Michael Rogalski, provider of images, from quicksand anytime.