reisen55 wrote:One interesting aspect of this thread as it related to quicksand and sinking is that we also all have incurred damage whenever sinking. There is no greater joy that pulling a foot out and finding, amidst the brown mud, a bit growing stain of RED indicative that you've stepped on something really bad.
Or, after spending an afternoon wading through the bottomless muck of an alkali slough, to wash the mud off your skin at an adjacent pond, only to discover that where the white alkali flakes/powder had stuck to the mud on your legs during your exit from the slough (only a mild stinging sensation), your skin there was now full of open sores and blisters! And, after cleaning, the raw skin underneath, which looked like it could completely heal within a couple of weeks, instead turned to red to brown to black over a course of a week or so, and then took 5 weeks to heal (actually some sores took longer), and have left white or red/purple marks/scars ever since, some with slight depressions in the skin! Fortunately, they have become less noticeable to varying degrees (some still stand out a bit) after over 16 months, but some of the white areas won't tan, but remain white.
Alkali ponds/lakes/sloughs. Such wonderful gooey mud, with the aroma of a seafood buffet! But, coated on top with white alkali stuff that can eat away at flesh slowly without you even knowing it, starting with any break in your skin, such as a scratch or scrape, or even an insect bite, with small blisters (I called them "barley blisters" because they looked like barley embedded in my skin) that then peel away, and then the sores spreading outward and deeper, with surrounding skin blistering (small "lip"-like blisters) and peeling away, and then eventually penetrating your pores as well to start the process of blistering and eating away at your flesh there (fortunately I stopped it before the pore penetration could get past just causing tiny brown specks of dead skin under the surface)!
Alkali burns are deceptive, since they dissolve flesh without any pain (well, I did feel some slight stinging sensations), and unlike (most) acids, which creates a coagulated barrier, the alkali simply continues to dissolve flesh without any bounds!