Speaker 1: Hello, friends, cease talking here with you this video. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a look at a concrete trap, the
Speaker 1: real horror of quicksand join me. Let's take a walk
Speaker 1: and see now. For nearly a century, Hollywood has sold
Speaker 1: us a specific nightmare. A panicked adventure stumbles into a
Speaker 1: patch of bubbling mire, flails helplessly, and is sucked beneath
Speaker 1: the surface in a matter of seconds, leaving only a
Speaker 1: hat floating on the mud. It's a staple of Saturday
Speaker 1: morning cartoons and b movies, a danger that feels as
Speaker 1: antiquated and fictional as a falling anvil, and I admit,
Speaker 1: growing up as a child watching it on television. Quicksand
Speaker 1: was a real fear when played outside. However, the reality
Speaker 1: of hikers trapped in Quicksand is both less dramatic and
Speaker 1: significantly more horrifying than the movie suggest. In the real world,
Speaker 1: you do not sink until you drown in the sand itself.
Speaker 1: Physics prevents. The human body is roughly half the density
Speaker 1: of quicksand, meaning you will float like a cork once
Speaker 1: you are submerged to your waist. The true killer is
Speaker 1: not the depth of the whole, but the nature of
Speaker 1: the trap. Real quicksand is a prison. It holds you
Speaker 1: fast while the environment, the rising tide, the freezing night,
Speaker 1: or the scorching sun, moves in for the kill. The
Speaker 1: following accounts are not urban legends. There are documented cases
Speaker 1: of hikers who stepped onto the wrong patch of earth
Speaker 1: and found themselves fighting for their lives against a phenomenon
Speaker 1: that behaves less like a liquid and more like a monster. Now,
Speaker 1: let's take a look at the physics of the trap.
Speaker 1: Understand the hiker's ordeal, you have to understand the substance.
Speaker 1: Quicksand is a non Newtonian fluid, a hydrogel consisting of
Speaker 1: fine granular material such as sand, silt, or clay, saturated
Speaker 1: with water. When undisturbed, appears solid, but a sudden change
Speaker 1: in stress, like a hiking boat striking the surface, decreases
Speaker 1: its viscosity, turning the solid ground into a liquid soup.
Speaker 1: Once the hiker sinks, the sand settles out of the
Speaker 1: water and forms a densely packed sediment around the legs.
Speaker 1: This is where the trap snaps shut. The water is
Speaker 1: squeezed out, creating a vacuum effect. To pull them straight
Speaker 1: out of this medium requires a force roughly equivalent to
Speaker 1: lifting a medium sized car. Quoting here, the best way
Speaker 1: to describe it would be standing in a huge public
Speaker 1: concrete that basically dries instantly end quote, says Brian Osman,
Speaker 1: a hiker who survived a horing ordeal in Utah. His
Speaker 1: description captures the terrifying reality. It's not a slow descend
Speaker 1: into the abyss, but an instant, crushing immobilization. Let's take
Speaker 1: a look at Ryan's story, the Zion Ordeal ten hours
Speaker 1: in the Ice. On February twenty nineteen, Ryan Osmond and
Speaker 1: his girlfriend Jessica McNeil were hiking the Subway, a famous
Speaker 1: and strenuous route in Zion National Park, Utah. The trail
Speaker 1: is renowned for its tubular canyon walls and emerald pools,
Speaker 1: but in winter it's a very cold and very desolate place.
Speaker 1: While crossing a small shallow stream, McNeil stepped into a
Speaker 1: patch of saturated sentiment and immediately sank. Osmond managed to
Speaker 1: pull her free, but in the exertion of the rescue,
Speaker 1: he stepped forward and his own right leg was swallowed
Speaker 1: up to the hip. I didn't realize my right leg
Speaker 1: was sinking all the way into the sand. Osmond later
Speaker 1: told CBS News, it felt like it had dried instantly.
Speaker 1: I couldn't move my leg at all. The situation deteriorated
Speaker 1: with terrifying speed. The couple was miles from the trailhead
Speaker 1: with no cell service. They tried to dig him out,
Speaker 1: but the nature of quicksand makes manual digging feudile. As
Speaker 1: soon as you scooped the sand away, the water saturated
Speaker 1: sludge blows back into the void, resealing the trap. Realizing
Speaker 1: he was immovable, Osmond made the agonizing decision to send
Speaker 1: McNeil to hike out alone for help. He was left
Speaker 1: waist deep in the freezing mud as a winter storm
Speaker 1: rolled in. About thirty minutes after she left, it started
Speaker 1: snowing really hard, so I was stuck in the water.
Speaker 1: While it was pouring snow, Osmond recalled, the physical toll
Speaker 1: of the trap began to set in. This is a
Speaker 1: medical reality known as crush syndrome or compartment syndrome, where
Speaker 1: the pressure of the sand cuts off circulation, leading to
Speaker 1: potential nerve damage or the release of toxins into the blood.
Speaker 1: Once the limb is freed alone in the dark, suffering
Speaker 1: from hypothermia, Osmond's mind went to dark places. I sat
Speaker 1: there for twelve hours, and I knew for sure I
Speaker 1: was dead, he told Outside magazine. I started to think
Speaker 1: about what I could do to die faster, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want to drown. If I fell again, that would
Speaker 1: be the worst way to go. Rescue eventually arrived in
Speaker 1: the form of park rangers, who had to utilize a
Speaker 1: mechanical pulley system to break the suction holding Oustmin's leg.
Speaker 1: It took significant mechanical force to free him. He was
Speaker 1: airlifted to a hospital, where he eventually recovered, though he
Speaker 1: suffered muscle damage from the crushing pressure of the sand.
Speaker 1: Now let's take a look at an Alaska nightmare. While
Speaker 1: Osmond fased the danger of exposure, honkers in Alaska face
Speaker 1: a far more urgent threat, the tide. The mud flats
Speaker 1: of turn Again Arm near Anchorage are composed of glacial silt,
Speaker 1: a fine ground flower of rock that creates some of
Speaker 1: the deadliest quicksand on Earth. Locals know the mantra stay
Speaker 1: off the mud flats, but to visitors, the vast flat
Speaker 1: expansions of gray silt look like solid beaches. The most
Speaker 1: tragic and well documented case occurred in July nineteen eight,
Speaker 1: involving a young woman named Adena Dickison. She and her
Speaker 1: husband were gold dredging on the mudflats when their ATV
Speaker 1: got stuck. While trying to push it out, Adena's leg
Speaker 1: became ensnared in the silt. The Turn Again Arm is
Speaker 1: famous for its bore tide, a rush of water that
Speaker 1: can raise the water level by dozens of feet in
Speaker 1: a terrifyingly short window. As Adena struggled, the silt liquified
Speaker 1: around her leg and then hardened, locking her in place.
Speaker 1: Rescuers arrived, but they were fighting a ticking clock. The
Speaker 1: physics of the glacial silt trap were insurmountable. In the
Speaker 1: time they had. They tried to dig her out. With
Speaker 1: the hole filled with water. They tied a rope around
Speaker 1: her and used the vehicle to try and pull her free,
Speaker 1: but the suction was so intense the force required to
Speaker 1: remove her would have dislocated her joints or even savered
Speaker 1: her leg. Tragically, the tide rose faster than they could work.
Speaker 1: Adena Dickison drowned in the rising water, despite the presence
Speaker 1: of rescuers just feet away. It remains one of the
Speaker 1: most harrowing examples of the immovable object nature of quicksand
Speaker 1: This danger persists today. In May twenty twenty three, another
Speaker 1: man became trapped in the same mudflats. Fortunately, rescue technology
Speaker 1: is improved. Firefighters used a specialized tool called a mud lance,
Speaker 1: which injects high pressure water and air into the silt
Speaker 1: around the trap leg. This process, known as liquification, used
Speaker 1: intentionally this time, breaks the suction of the vacuum. The
Speaker 1: man was extracted just minutes before the freezing tide would
Speaker 1: have reached him. Now let's look at a modern rescue
Speaker 1: the stuck quicksand hiker. Even experienced hikers with modern technology
Speaker 1: can fall victim to the trap. In a very recent
Speaker 1: case from December twenty twenty five, a Season three hiker
Speaker 1: named Austin Dirks found himself immobilized in Arches National Park, Utah.
Speaker 1: Dirks was hiking the Heyduke Trail, a rugged eight hundred
Speaker 1: mile route, when he stepped into what looked like a
Speaker 1: shallow stream bed in Courthouse Wash. In seconds, he was
Speaker 1: trapped up to his knee. Unlike the movie characters who
Speaker 1: Flail and Sink, Dirks found himself in a stalemate. I
Speaker 1: tried my trekking poles he would write later. They sank
Speaker 1: to the handles the moment I leaned on them. The
Speaker 1: stream water rushing past him filled every hole he tried
Speaker 1: to dig, and the angle of his leg became torture.
Speaker 1: He says, quote my knee bent to a painful forty
Speaker 1: five degrees over my foot, and I could not straighten
Speaker 1: it end quote. Dirks possessed a garment in rached satellite messenger,
Speaker 1: a device that likely saved his life. With frozen fingers,
Speaker 1: he typed a message that was as brief as it
Speaker 1: was terrifying, stuck quicksand hiker. The rescue operation highlighted the
Speaker 1: sheer difficulty extraction. It wasn't enough to just pull. Search
Speaker 1: and rescue teams had to deploy traction boards and ladders
Speaker 1: to distribute their own weight so they wouldn't become victims themselves.
Speaker 1: Then they had to carefully escavate his leg, battling the
Speaker 1: freezing water and the refilling sand. When they finally pulled
Speaker 1: me free, Dirks recounted, my shoe almost tore off, but
Speaker 1: held on. My leg, had no feeling left in it,
Speaker 1: and nearly collapsed when I put weight on it. Now,
Speaker 1: let's look at the psychology of the stuck. What connects Osmond, Dickinson,
Speaker 1: and Dirks is a psychological shock of the trap. In
Speaker 1: all three cases, the ground, the one element humans rely
Speaker 1: on to be static, betrayed them. You see this stuff
Speaker 1: in movies and you don't think of it happened to you.
Speaker 1: Osmond said. This cognitive distance often leads to panic, which
Speaker 1: speeds up the entrapman. When a person struggles, they essentially
Speaker 1: churn the mix, forcing more water out of the suspension
Speaker 1: and packing the sand tired around their limbs. Doctor Daniel Bond,
Speaker 1: a physicist who published a study on quicksand in Nature magazine,
Speaker 1: confirmed that it is impossible for a human to be
Speaker 1: fully submerged. You cannot drown in quicksand, Bond stated, but
Speaker 1: if you get stuck, the sand settles around your feet
Speaker 1: and forms the sentiment that acts like a solid. You
Speaker 1: can get out, but it requires patience and specific technique.
Speaker 1: In conclusion, the reality of quicksand is not the fast paced,
Speaker 1: breathless drounding depicted in Saying the Princess Bride. It's a slow,
Speaker 1: cold and crushing ordeal. It's the panic of a limb
Speaker 1: that won't move, the pain of a knee twisted against
Speaker 1: the weight of the earth and the terrifying realization that
Speaker 1: you're rooted to the spot while the omens close in.
Speaker 1: Hikers are taught to look for bears, to watch for storms,
Speaker 1: and to carry enough water, but the ground itself remains
Speaker 1: an overlooked predator. As Ryan Osmond's Public Concrete proves, the
Speaker 1: earth does not need to swallow you hole to kill you.
Speaker 1: It only needs to hold you tight enough and long
Speaker 1: enough for something else to finish the job. The survival
Speaker 1: advice from experts contradicts our instincts. Do not struggle, do
Speaker 1: not have a friend pull you, and if possible, lean
Speaker 1: back to distribute your weight. Does these cases show once
Speaker 1: the trap is set, the only thing that matters is
Speaker 1: how fast help can arrive. Well, friends, there you have it.
Speaker 1: As always, I look forward to your comments on this one.
Speaker 1: As for me, I'll see you a little further on
Speaker 1: down the trail. Watch out for that quicksand I'm Steve
Speaker 1: Stockton and I'll talk to you next time. Be good
Speaker 1: to each other and tell your animals I said hi.