Why is it difficult to drown in the dead sea
Answers
The popular wisdom is that no one can drown in the Dead Sea because they'll float on the super-salty waters. That's wrong, but it's true that drownings in the Dead Sea are different from drowning deaths in ordinary waters.
The Dead Sea straddles the border of Israel and Jordan. Although the name 'Dead Sea' doesn't promise a good time, it's a fairly popular tourist destination. The concentrated saline is said to be a cure for a number of health conditions, and resorts and medical facilities crowd around the sea's edge. Tourists are encouraged to swim in its waters. There's no fear of sharks. Almost nothing lives in the water. The Dead Sea is landlocked and in the lowest valley on earth. All the minerals of the surrounding countryside get washed into one pool, which in turn gets baked by the sun. This concentrates the salts so much that the Dead Sea is 10 times as salty as the ocean.
All this salt has contributed to the myth that people cannot drown in the Dead Sea. It's true that they can't drown in the conventional way - slipping below the surface of the water. The more salt is dissolved in water, the denser it becomes. Objects in water stop sinking when they displace a mass of water equal to their body mass. In unsalted water, that means a large amount of the body is underwater - all of it for particularly dense people. In dense, salty water, a little body displaces a lot of mass, and most of the body stays out of the water. It's hard to drown a person when most of their body is floating on top of the water like a cork