A damping device using viscous shear to moderate substantially linear movement. The device has a housing with one or more reservoirs containing a viscous fluid, such as silicone, and one or more retractable struts that can extend from the housing. The strut has a portion formed as a toothed rack, and an associated axle has a pinion gear on a portion associated with the toothed rack of the strut. The teeth of the rack mate with teeth of the pinion gear. A disk, or preferably series of spaced disks, can be mounted on the axle inside the reservoir to dampen linear movement of the strut, from shear with a static plate adjacent to the disk on the axle. The relatively fixed, spaced disks or plates are adjacent to or interdigitated with the disks on the gear axles to dampen linear movement of a strut.