> The Martian
The thin atmosphere bit is acknowledged by the author, you can watch his talk here around 32:35:
I just want to be as accurate as I possibly could. There are a few places that are inaccurate. The biggest place that's inaccurate is right at the beginning. Don't tell anybody, but if you're in a dust storm on Mars, you're not even going to feel it. Mars' atmosphere is less than 1% of Earth's. So a 150 kilometer an hour wind would feel like about 1 kilometer an hour wind does on Earth. It wouldn't do any damage to anything.
There is another clarification later at 35:34 saying the dust storm is basically like talcum powder.