Written by: Beck
You know what you never seem to hear about anymore?
Quicksand. What's up with that? Used to be you could hardly get through a day of Lassie, Leave it to Beaver, Little Rascals, or some other children's sitcom (did people really watch this stuff?) without someone getting stuck in quicksand. The last quicksand reference I can remember seeing is from the 1974 Mel Brooks film
Blazing Saddles.
My guess is that it's a function of education. I can seem to recall in elementary school a teacher telling the class that we'd probably never even see quicksand, but that if we did, it was easier to float on than water.
Howstuffworks.com puts it this way: "While quicksand remains the hackneyed convention of bad adventure movies, there's very little to be afraid of in real life. As long as you keep a cool head in the situation, the worst result will be a shoe full of wet sand."
I guess the notion of quicksand just doesn't seem that scary anymore, what with how you can turn on the news any day of the week and find vastly scarier stuff.