Thirsty Desert

From Tv Tropes

The desert. A parched, barren wasteland stretching for miles in every direction. If the maddening heat doesn't drive you into a Mushroom Samba or just kill you, the lack of water or one of the desert's many hostile inhabitants probably will. Basically, this trope is to Shifting Sand Land as Hungry Jungle is to Jungle Japes or Lovecraft Country is to Hollywood New England - a nastier, more serious portrayal of the same region.


Examples

Contents

[edit] Anime and Manga

[edit] Comedy

  • The setting of "The Longest Joke In The World".

[edit] Film

[edit] Literature

[edit] Tabletop Games

[edit] Television

  • The Twilight Zone TOS:
    • The Libyan desert in episode "King Nine Will Not Return".
    • An (unnamed) American desert in "The Rip Van Winkle Caper".
  • The Prisoner (2009) had the desert surrounding the Village, filmed in Namibia.

[edit] Video Games

  • Appears in King's Quest III and King's Quest V. In the first game, it's essentially a barrier to prevent you from going too far the wrong way. It's an insidious maze in the latter.
  • Lamakan Desert in Golden Sun.
  • Very much a part of Quest For Glory II, where the player will literally die of thirst if you don't have enough water, and multiple foes ranging from vicious brigands to giant scorpions to rampaging mini T. rexes to ghouls will try to kill you.
  • Breath Of Fire III features a trackless desert towards the end of the game. Travel is only feasible at night, as you're navigating by the stars, but you can travel during the day if you don't mind expending more water and getting disoriented (i.e. don't travel during the day). You start with enough water to just barely reach your destination, but you can escape back to the entrance without any problems, even if you've been traveling for days.

[edit] Web Original

[edit] Webcomics

  • Saharan, Subsaharan and generally middle-eastern countries in various Fansadox stories.

[edit] Real Life

  • Generally averted in Real Life, since desert biomes are often teeming with life despite the harsh climate.
  • Parts of the Atacama Desert in South America haven't received rainfall in hundreds, possibly thousands, of years. Some areas receive moisture from coastal fog, other areas are as dead and barren as Mars.
    • In its most desolate regions the Atacama is allegedly sterile, as not even bacteria can survive there. When the Top Gear boys crossed the Atacama on a road trip, Jeremy Clarkson mentioned this - primarily to illustrate that co-host Richard Hammond was currently the smallest organism within a hundred miles.
    • It's funny that in Romanian it means "Attack me".
  • The Rub' Al Khali (translated "The Empty Quarter) desert on the southern Arabian peninsula is one of the largest sand deserts in the world, taking up about 250,000 square miles of area. While it's not completely inhospitable (there is some life), it's close: water sources are extremely few and far between. On the flip side, though, it's geologically rich, with mineral and oil deposits estimated to be worth billions. So much so that some geologists call it the Rub' Al Ghali, meaning the Valuable Quarter, according to The Other Wiki.
  • The Taklamakan Desert in Central Asia is often considered the world's worst desert to attempt to cross. Antarctica is actually far bleaker to cross, but it's not a Thirsty Desert.

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