Remember when Quicksand felt like the greatest threat to your life? In the ‘90s, Hollywood blockbusters had us believing that this natural phenomenon was waiting around every corner to swallow us whole. After all, it made short work of Atreyu in The Never Ending Story (#triggered.)

Quicksand, or sand saturated with water that behaves like a liquid, forms in loose sand when the sand is suddenly agitated. It's a messy inconvenience, for sure - but in reality, quicksand is about as threatening as a puddle. That's because quicksand has a density of about 2 grams per cubic centimetre, whereas the density of the human body is only about 1 gram per cubic centimetre, saving us from the doom often dramatised on the silver screen.