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I don't have experience with quicksand, but one can retrieve a stuck boot (that you're still standing in) from thick mud by pulling up on your bootstrap (or whe
by pbhjpbhj 4y ago
I don't have experience with quicksand, but one can retrieve a stuck boot (that you're still standing in) from thick mud by pulling up on your bootstrap (or where it would be). You break the suction by lifting the heel, but the foot itself pulls out of the boot, so you have to free yourself by your bootstrap ... you just can lift yourself into the air that way!
- hnbad 4y agoThe idea with quicksand was that you would keep sinking in it until you drown (imagine it as a bottomless pit). So pushing down on it would only get you stuck further. Pulling on your bootstraps would do nothing because by pulling on them you would need to push down elsewhere and thus still continue to sink. In reality you can't drown in quicksand because it's more dense than the human body. To avoid getting stuck it's entirely sufficient to just move slowly to loosen it and break the suction as with mud. Pulling on your bootstraps is useful to free your boots but entirely unnecessary to simply free yourself. But this expression refers to escaping the fictional trope, not the real thing.