What If You Fell into Liquid Nitrogen?
Nitrogen makes up about 78% of the earth’s atmosphere and is even a key ingredient in
our own bodies.
When in liquid form, though, it’s classified as a cryogenic fluid - which is a liquid with
a boiling point anywhere below minus-150 degrees Celsius.
For liquid nitrogen, that boiling point dips to an extremely low minus-196 degrees Celsius…
which means that this stuff is almost unfathomably cold!
So, what would something like that do to the human body?
This is Unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; What if you fell
into liquid nitrogen?
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We essentially create liquid nitrogen by extracting regular nitrogen out of the atmosphere, cooling
and compressing it.
From there, for it to even exist in its liquid form, it’s kept at between minus-195 and
minus-210 degrees Celsius.
Anywhere below that very narrow window and it gets so cold that it freezes; anywhere
above it and the nitrogen reverts back to gas.
Largely because of this, genuine liquid nitrogen is reasonably rare, and it needs to be carefully
insulated at all times.
It is used in a variety of industrial ways, though - including as a coolant for computers,
as a method to instantly freeze food in some kitchens, and as a tool to remove unwanted
skin during minor plastic surgery - but working with it isn’t easy.
Anyone using liquid nitrogen is always limited by the fact that it instantly boils whenever
it comes into contact with something that has a temperature significantly higher than
its minus-195-degree boiling point - which is almost anything else in everyday life.
There is the briefest of respites, though, thanks to the Leidenfrost Effect which describes
how some liquids - including liquid nitrogen - momentarily create a thin layer of insulation
so that they don’t just evaporate instantly.
If it weren’t for this Leidenfrost phenomenon, liquid nitrogen that isn’t properly insulated
wouldn’t exist long enough for anyone to even observe it, let alone fall into it.
But what if you did exactly that?
Upon direct contact with the skin, liquid nitrogen causes some perhaps fairly predictable
injuries including frostbite and cold burns.
With more delicate tissue like your eyes, though, just the cold cloud of gas surrounding
it can cause major damage.
These problems actually wouldn’t be instant, though, and that’s due to the Leidenfrost
Effect again.
Initially, within the first few milliseconds, your body should be enveloped in a protective
layer of steam.
Theoretically, it could be possible to dip in and out of liquid nitrogen without catastrophic
injury… but that supposedly safe period is very, very small - a fraction of a second
- so it’s in no way advisable to test it out!
After those opening moments, liquid nitrogen sets to work fast by zapping all of the water
molecules in all types of matter and freezing them.
Given that the human body is up to 75% water, it’s clearly very susceptible to being fatally
frozen very quickly.
And unfortunately, despite what some science fiction says, it’s unlikely that you’ll
ever be somehow re-awakened from the ordeal in the future.
Because stepping into liquid nitrogen does not place you into a cryogenic sleep… but
instead, when water cells freeze they usually rupture, meaning your body would now be extremely
brittle and fragile.
In fact, a Swedish company effectively uses this method to dispose of deceased bodies
- by shaking or smashing them into a fine powder after freezing them with liquid nitrogen.
It’s thought to be both a more cost-effective and environmentally friendly way of dealing
with corpses, compared to traditional burial or cremation.
And it’s also said to more closely resemble a natural fate for decomposing matter, allowing
human remains to return carbon back into the earth within a year.
So, if you ever did accidentally fall into liquid nitrogen, at least your form could
very quickly make its way back into nature.
In general, getting frozen by liquid nitrogen works much, much faster than freezing to death
via something like hypothermia, but both horrendous experiences share some similar effects.
First, the blood flow in your veins and capillaries constricts, on its way toward ultimately freezing
completely.
Next, the body loses its color and becomes noticeably, ghostly pale - mostly because
the blood flow has stopped or is slowing.
A person freezing to death via slower means might soon be unable to move, and could experience
confusion and even hallucinations as their oxygen-starved brains become less and less
efficient in the low temperature.
These effects would also happen with liquid nitrogen, only much more quickly - within
a matter of seconds.
Interestingly, though, again because of the Leidenfrost effect blanketing your body in
steam after the initial contact, the pain probably wouldn’t seem like extreme cold
at first… and could even feel quite hot.
Once your body temperature invariably drops, however, and the Leidenfrost -free liquid
nitrogen ruthlessly smothers you - it’d be indescribably cold, beyond anything any
human body could withstand.
Should you accidentally swallow some of the liquid nitrogen, as well, you’d also be
subjected to another, different-but-just-as-extreme pain than simply being frozen alive.
That’s because liquid nitrogen has a liquid-to-gas expansion ratio of 1 to 696, which essentially
means that… for every one litre of the liquid itself… it produces 0.696 cubic meters (or
24.6 cubic feet) of nitrogen gas.
Naturally, that gas spreads and fills up space quickly…
So, as the liquid nitrogen you swallowed while freezing is evaporating in your stomach and
turning into nitrogen, it’s exerting a massive amount of pressure on your internal organs.
With nowhere for that gas build-up to escape to, your now-brittle, frozen body could theoretically
- if you swallowed enough, and in a worst-case-scenario - rupture and effectively implode.
And so, a grisly death just got even grislier!
Fortunately, it would take a large amount of liquid nitrogen to cover your entire body,
and you’re not likely to find any open barrels of it lying around due to the fact that it
needs to be precisely insulated to stay in liquid form.
It’s also not naturally occurring on earth, as it’s far too cold a substance to sustain
itself anywhere.
So, the odds of anyone ever encountering this particular problem are very slim.
Actually surviving a fall into liquid nitrogen, however, would be all but impossible.
Unless you were pulled back out within milliseconds - and even then, your hopes of survival are
low - there’d be no time to swim your way to safety before your body literally froze
solid, potentially shattered into pieces, and you died.
The only mercy would be that there wouldn’t be much time to feel the intense pain - because
it’d all happen so quickly.
And that’s what would happen if you fell into liquid nitrogen.
What do you think?
Is there anything we missed?
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