Quicksand Fans

I was wondering if wax could be a viable sinking medium? It could be used in two ways:

First, the stuff that is more of the rigid type with a very high melting temperature could be colored, powdered, and used just like the cork in a cork pit! Its rigidity and high melting point are necessary to prevent it from clumping.

Second, perhaps a wax that is of a lower melting point, with the appropriate (safe) additives, and also colored, could possibly yield a wax that in itself would be soft enough to yield beneath a victim's feet and suck her down! But, it could be hazardous if it is too deep, since it has a lower density than water.

This is something interesting to think about, and it doesn't decompose.

I'm thinking that would change hardness by temp. That too, could be interesting, if you got it *just right*, as it would initially hold a person's weight, but as it took heat, it would soften, so the person would start sinking. You'd need some reason for the sinker not to move. The deeper they do sink, the more body contact to give heat to the wax, so the faster it gets soft. (this will likely give a female model cold feet, which usually isn't a happy thing, but it would also likely give her goosebumps and erect nipples, both of which are major happy things in my humble opinion!)

I'm thinking (if this mix was found) that this would be the perfect deathtrap to leave some costumed "superheros" in for some sinister scientist badguy. If it were slow enough, the heroes might not even realize what trouble they were in. Focusing on getting ropes untied (or picking the lock of some non-standard handcuffs, or whatever) could keep them distracted until they were up to mid calf or knees, then the real fun starts!

Then again, maybe the mix is not soft enough to trap a footstep until it's bath-temp, so a heated pit would be needed, and the pit could be cooled to make it as hard as the floor.

Fun idea!

This whole idea sounds titillating to me. You could use black wax that looked like tar or leather!

My father ran a print shop. From that, know they do make adhesive waxes. While I've never used that much of it, to know if it would string out like tar as you pulled away from it, but I think you have it when it does. Again, in that such things vary in viscosity by heat, you would about have to have a fine control over the temp of the pit.

I thought about when I saw The House Of Wax remake. Near the end the villian is sinking into the melting wax floor he's already dead though so there's not much of a scene. But I remember an old Animaniacs comic called Meltdown at the Wax Museum, had a couple panels of Dot sinking and before being rescued from Quickwax.

The House of Wax remake with Elisa Cuthbert and Paris Hilton had some much potential for either of them being stuck in the melting wax, but disappointment in the movie. Either of them stuck in quicksand would be wonderful!

Wrote a long reply to this thread, but I forgot to hit "safe draft", got logged out, and lost it.

Anyway, the jist of it is, you can obtain wax that is non-toxic, and is sinkably soft at a temperature that won't burn your model, in industrial quantities. Not cheap- maybe $1,500 + - per ton. Not sure of the shipping costs- that cost might be FOB (port) and you'd have to pay to have it shipped from the entry port to your location.

Interesting that the wax would harden on contact with the model's skin, and the cooling wax would get progressively thicker and stickier.

Petroleum jelly is another option, likewise non-toxic and available in industrial quantities.

Petroleum jelly? I would think that would be too soft and not sticky enough to make for much fun for me. It might be good for a model, but I don't know what you would do about the run-off when you cleaned your models, or what you would do if you were to get to a point where you wanted to filter impurities out, or clean the pit out. If you start dumping that just anywhere, I'm thinking you'll be killing some forest or grass, and maybe screwing up your groundwater, too.

Really, though, I have no idea that wax would be any better. At the print shop, it wound up in the trash after it was used, so I don't know what ill effects it may have had, and something you can purchase today could be just as variable from deadly to edible. I don't know. Maybe there's an OSHA card on it.

Wax is actually the key to something already used and might be for something new if anyone has the knowledge to do it. The wax the forms naturally in the bark of a particular oak tree is what gives cork its useful properties. Its what keeps it water resistant even when its granulated. A long time ago I did some experiments to see if I could get sawdust and a few other inexpensive filler materials to absorb paraffin wax but I was not successful. I also found a company that had been successful in making shredded paper hydrophobic (water repellent) and selling the product as an oil absorbent for oil spills on water. I spent $700.00 for a pallet of the stuff and built what was called the "paper pit" where the small peat pit is now. It looked and acted very well as video quicksand, for about 10 days. Then it began to stink. The paper was absorbing water so while the treatment process worked long enough to make an oil absorbent it was not good enough to make theatrical quicksand.

In the House of Wax movie (the 2005 remake), there are bloopers from the final scenes where you can see Elisha Cuthbert getting stuck in a melting "wax" bed. It's really peanut butter, but hey, if it's good enough for a 40-million dollar movie...

http://youtu.be/29RgGrtvutk?t=20m54s