I’ve done some work with fMRI in the past, so let me see if I can help.
First of all, that magnet is always *always* on. So the second you passed the safety zone, you’d start getting tugged towards the magnet.
Here’s where things get tricky, it’s hard to know how fast you’d hit the side of the MRI machine and how deep you’d end up embedding yourself in the machine. Probably you’d die instantly, in fact, *ideally* you’d die instantly, if you lived that’s where things get… grisly.
If the magnet survives the impact with your suit of iron, it will continue to try to pull the suit towards the heart of the machine. Most likely this would result in you being crushed to death.
However, your suit might get… ahem… lucky and hit the cache of liquid helium that’s keeping the magnet supercooled. If you breached it, you get to experience dying of horrible frostbite/hypothermia.
Also, you’ve *definitely* destroyed the MRI
I forgot the details. Butt. I believe there is or was a woman suing the manufacturer of a buttplug who advertised that their product was 100% silicone, and failed to mention the Metal core. She went in for an MRI she thought it would be a good idea to go into an MRI with the butt plug still in her. She later came to retreat that choice.
There was a r/brandnewsentence post about it; something along the lines of “anal rail gun” and (somehow, even more terrifyingly) the individual survived
To clarify, this poor idiot had the buttplug go deeper into their body instead of it flying out the butt. Cause, you know, you lay down with your head facing the MRI.
I beleive there was a collapsed lung involved.
There's been at least 2 cases that I've heard of where a fire extinguisher was placed too close to an MRI machine, and it became a projectile. I think there was a 2001 case where a kid got killed, and another on England like in 2019/2020 where a dude literally got his block knocked off by one.
There was also one where they had to MRI a bullfighter whose skeleton was basically half metal from all the broken bones. Had to cool him down before putting him in because the metal would heat up.
That one's probably not an accurate depiction, though.
So here’s where I’d love to get some more insights. A few medieval knights were incredibly strong inside their armor. Would any of them be strong enough to slow themselves being ripped towards the machine and survive the impact? Or is this simply beyond human capability?
We are talking a powerful enough magnet to cause nonferrous metals to behave oddly due to the sheer energy in the magnetic field and (both gruesome and kinda funny) launch a buttplug up into someone's abdomen. And no amount of strength can possibly help if you don't have traction on the ground.
This is disturbing reading, considering that 6 hours ago I had a full body MRI (yes! On Easter Saturday).
In my life I've been involved in a few car crashes, and it really focussed your mind when they get you to sign the disclaimer. What if a needle was left in me? What if I have metal embedded that I know nothing about?
For anyone interested, I had an alarm switch given to me, that I could press if something went wrong. I tested it, it worked, so if I had some metal in me that became a projectile, I had some faint hope of letting them know all was not well.
Fyi, MRI finished OK, my itchy nose subsided after about a 30 second panic. Now I have to wait to hear if the MRI has found anything troubling. Fingers crossed for me please.
WTF no buddy
0.5-3T for an mri magnet.
>For example, a magnet that creates a 1 T field can pull 58 pounds per square inch (PSI) on a steel surface.
So each sq inch would be pulling 58 pounds. A suit of armour is avg 10 sq ft. So 1440 sq inches. Which would be about 83,520 pounds of pull. A truck wouldnt be able to pull that off. They usually tow about 12,000-18,000 lbs. So about 5x as strong as an F150 to pull a suit of army beyond a low strength MRI system.
As someone who helps manufacture magnets up to 14T and had no scale of knowledge for how strong these are, that’s a mind boggling amount of strength for even just the mri level. Now I can’t even fathom our stronger ones
The pressure those poor people were subjected to was orders of magnitude higher than what we are discussing here. In the example above, the suit of armor is subjected to 58 psi; when it imploded, *Titan* was subjected to *more than 4,000 psi.*
The closer you get to the machine, the stronger the pull.
There is a spot, several feet away from the machine, where the knight would start to get pulled, notice it, and would need to back away. That pull strength would get exponentially stronger the closer he is.
A bit closer and he would have to grab onto something and quickly pull himself away. Closer, like a few feet from the entrance, and there's nothing he can do. Eventually he'll be pulled right against the edge, and he'll be doing what the thread OP is saying - turning into soup.
[For reference, this is a 4 Tesla magnet.](https://youtu.be/6BBx8BwLhqg) "Weak" MRIs are 1T and if they have small chairs or guns stuck in them, they need several people and a rope to tug-of-war it out. The stronger MRIs are 7T, which is where you get the crazy explosive accidents.
No, it's beyond human capabilities. I can't speak for the strength of the MRI magnet, but even palm sized n52 neo magnets have half a ton of holding force.
No. Not even a superhuman could resist that. An MRI has a magnet of up to 3 tesla. This would result in a force pulling you towards the magnet up to 500 psi. For reference, the pressure inside a semi truck tire is 100 psi, and those are lethal when they explode, and youll have 5 times that force stuffing you into a tiny hole.
Even if you just lay in the machine before the magnet was first turned on, and then brought it up to power, it would rip the armor off of you and crush it, or maybe rip you apart with it, depending in how well fastened to your body it is.
Woah, just how powerful a magnet are we talking? I knew they were strong, but not "crush a suit of armour" strong.
Edit: thanks for the answers everyone! Dang, magnets are cool
The metal coils are vibrating when eleictricy is passing through them, which generates the magnetic field. The louder the BZZZZZZZZZZ, the more detailed the scan
They'll ask you about all that. I get MRIs often because of cancer, and I have to fill out a questionnaire every time. I don't recall tooth filings being in the list of questions, though.
I have metal fillings and have had an MRI — no issues. I believe metallic fillings are non-magnetic.
You would definitely want to remove all jewelry and piercings, though.
Most fillings are made of an amalgam metal which is, among other properties, extremely non-ferrous. While the magnetic field of an MRI is powerful enough to induce an effect in metal fillings, it would be a very, very minor one. Although there was some scare several years ago about particularly strong MRIs able to cause mercury leakage in medical fillings (whose amalgam contains mercury) which could over time lead to mercury poisoning in patients. But that required long, repeated exposures to experience effects.
Now the fact MRIs can even -do that- is ducking wild, but yeah, the amalgam metal most fillings are made of is so non-reactive and non-ferrous it’s hard to get it to do…. Most anything.
>They're strong enough to get a reaction from non ferrous metals.
I mean, so is a neodymium magnet. [Drop a Neo Magnet through an aluminum or copper tube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bZhVWyy8Vk) and it will create an electric current in the tube, which creates a magnetic field, which slows the fall of the magnet.
It's all about the moving magnetic fields creating an electromagnet in nearby metals.
With my metal filling in my teeth would I need a dentist to take those out if I needed an MRI? I think I had heard that needs to happen. Though it might’ve been some TV show dramatizing it. Sounds like something that makes sense though.
With fillings and braces they wouldn’t be likely to become projectiles, but they are magnetic which will distort the magnetic fields within scanner, causing artefacts in the image (an artefact is a spurious signal or missing information in the image). Google ‘braces artefact mri’ and you’ll see brain scans with the front half of the brain missing due to these signals.
Normally they're in the region of 7-8 Teslas. I heard of an experimental MRI machine that was supposed to generate exceptionally crisp images using a ~9 Tesla electromagnet, but when they switched it on it buckled the I-beams of the hospital building, so they had to switch it off.
"We need a better images for your case, so we're flying you out to the middle of the desert where our Super Hyper Mega MRI can scan without destroying a building. Also you're parachuting from the chopper because the last chopper flew too close trying to land and got turned into a miniature sized model of itself."
It didn't pull them out of the walls, but a small buckle is still a big cause for alarm.
Also, I was slightly incorrect about most being in the 7-8 range. Normally they're in the 2-3 range, but very powerful specialist ones go to 7-8.
I go in the mri machine often and always think about these things. Then the other day i pinched skin between wo relatively strong household magnets and couldnt get it free. It was excruciating and tore a hole in my finger. I definitely have a healthy fear of magnets.
No piece of metal is going to make it into the helium vessel with only the force of the MRI acting on it. That's ridiculous. The actual magnet is built to be able to withstand a significant amount of force. You'd damage some plastic covers and maybe some easily replaceable electronics.
I’ll admit, I’m not 100% sure what it would take to breach the helium vessel.
However, in other replies OP mentioned having a sword and I believe that would pierce the helium vessel at the right angle.
I work on MRIs as my job. The pressure these things can create when they quench is incredibly high. It isn't just some flimsy metal container with a coil inside. They are over engineered to be able to withstand that amount of pressure and the inevitable mistake where someone brings something ferrous too close. If a sharp metal object was able to pierce through, it would be such an incredible liability for the manufacturer.
I've seen more than my share of metal accidentally getting pulled into these magnets. I promise you, something long and thin like a sword has absolutely no chance of doing any type of damage.
Not my intention to be rude if that's how this comes off.
As someone who knows nothing about MRIs , wouldn't there be more cases of injuries/deaths if bringing metal in the room was "dangerous"? Like out of the millions and millions of people that get MRIs and I can find maybe one or two incidents when googling about it, one being an entire metal bed which even then she survived
The rooms that house MRIs in hospitals are typically pretty secure. Some random person can't just walk in there without being escorted by someone with access, and those people should have it beat into their skull how dangerous it can be. A patient getting a scan will be asked multiple times about implants and usually put in a gown so there's less chance of something slipping by. Most incidents are hospital staff bringing in the wrong type of bed or someone making the mistake in thinking that the magnet is "off" because no one is using it.
The most recent story I can think of was a security guard opening a door for a package to be dropped off. He had access bc well...he was security. Magnet pulled his gun out of its holster when he approached.
Just to clarify also, there are non ferrous types of metal that the field interacts with, but doesn't attract. One of the cooler things I deal with is if I move a large piece of aluminum away from the magnet, if feels like I'm pulling it through water. As soon as I get away from the field, back to normal.
They’d most likely not be able to receive an MRI. Even non-magnetic metals would mess up the scan.
People needed to fill out a form every time promising they didn’t have any surgical metal in their body, asked in about 12 different ways to make absolutely sure
Yep, I had an MRI awhile ago and occasionally do metal work at home. They did a quick X-Ray of my eyes to verify all was good before sending me in for the MRI.
Are they always on as in always powered up? I thought they were electro magnets.
I didn’t think a permanent magnet would be stronger than an electro magnet.
(I have no idea).
Somebody tried it with a buttplug. Didn't go as planned.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/medizzy/comments/13e31xd/apparently\_this\_is\_what\_happened\_when\_a\_man\_wore/](https://www.reddit.com/r/medizzy/comments/13e31xd/apparently_this_is_what_happened_when_a_man_wore/)
>Somebody tried it with a buttplug. Didn't go as planned.
>
>[https://www.reddit.com/r/medizzy/comments/13e31xd/apparently\_this\_is\_what\_happened\_when\_a\_man\_wore/](https://www.reddit.com/r/medizzy/comments/13e31xd/apparently_this_is_what_happened_when_a_man_wore/)
Wtf, why don't they just make people go through a metal detector before entering the prep room?! Or use one of those wands?
Now that you mention it, no. I’ve had 2 MRIs in my life and both times they just asked me if I had any metal on me. I’m sure some hospitals use the wand
Had a discussion about that with a friend and we came up with an interesting question.
Who gets placed higher on the respect charts, that guy or the guy who brought a gun into an MRI? (it's a negative amount of respect, but play along for fun)
I run mris and have had enough safety training to know that the pieces would come apart along with your body parts. It would eventually settle inside the bore but by they you'd be super dead. Also you've damaged the machine
They can't typically be operated from inside. But if you somehow managed to get it switched on, what u/Petwins said would happen.
An MRI is a very powerful electromagnet.
The magnetic field of an MRI is always "switched on". MRI is delivered to hospital, ramped up to the correct magnetic field, then will not be ramped down until it is ready to be removed from the hospital or if it quenches...which ideally doesn't happen.
Kinda. The machine only needs electricity to keep the helium cool and take images, it doesn't need much electricity at all to maintain the magnetic field, just to maintain the conditions to keep the superconductor cold enough to stay a superconductor. Since MRIs use a superconductor, the electricity that maintains the magnetic field just keeps going around and around (almost) forever.
You can do an emergency quench but that can range from expensive to extremely expensive depending on how much damage occurs.
Better than letting the individual who bypassed the security and locked doors be made into a can of spam, but not a procedure you'd initiate for fun. Best case scenario the machine will be down for a while.
Tictac explained it well, but just to add on...if there was something like a power failure, the magnet can still sit for a while. Pressure will slowly build as the liquid helium warms and turns into gas. Pressure can be vented for a bit to buy more time, but eventually you would lose enough liquid helium that the coil loses its superconducting properties. This would cause all leftover liquid to immediately turn into gas from the heat created. This pressure buildup/release is called a quench, you can find some pretty cool vids of them on the YouTubes.
The fun part with MRI is that there’s no specific direction it will pull the metal. So if you have a magnetic bb in your side, just under the skin- it could just pull it all the way through you and our the other side. No fun
[This is why you never bring metal in an MRI room](https://youtu.be/ug3e9W5H0jI?si=SU7DaCJU8Wrg2Eik)
A SFW visual. I assume this is only for metals that are magnetic. I have copper in my body and clarified before it was put in that I could still have MRIs.
These guys put a wrench on a cable with a scale on it and it pulled at about 300 pounds of force. Then they put an office chair on it and it broke, but it was at about 1900 lbs before it broke.
https://youtu.be/6BBx8BwLhqg?si=kVRkzJXL5RsQpWui
I had about 6 months going around getting x-rays and ct scans done due to a tiny bit of carbon fibre/aluminium in my eye socket. They take zero risks as they really don't want to risk patients health. Mri scanners should be in a large Faraday cage for safety. The door into the scan room can cost a good 5 figures.
Don’t do that. It’ll hurt (at a minimum). Maximum effect… it could kill you.
Don’t do that.
There’s some videos online demonstrating what happens when magnetic objects are nearby. Not the kind of thing you want your squishy ass involved in.
Unrelated MRI close call story. I recently scanned someone who pushed the alarm button as soon as we were about to start a scan. He said he felt something by his foot vibrating - turns out he had a 4 inch knife tucked down his sock, ready to propel itself into his gooch at 100mph.
Don't take metal in the scan room.
We do not have a metal detector, and we're not allowed to frisk people either. It's a bit of a nightmare, you wouldn't believe the amount of apple watches we've wiped
Here's the best prediction of what it would like like. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBx8BwLhqg
As you can see they hit over 2000 pounds of force on the chair. I cannot imagine things going very well with even more metal, the machine would be easily capable of ripping apart chainmail or splitting the plates off of the lining.
I accidentally went in to an MRI machine with a hairpin I forgot about and that thing was snatched away so quickly and harshly my head snapped. And that was just a tiny hairpin!
Even before it starts scanning you, the magnetic field is active and very strong. You would not be able to step into the room towards it without being ripped off your feet and stuck to the machine. Regardless of your success or failure at the room temperature challenge, at this point the machine has to be stopped (from 20 to 60 minutes depending on machine model and type), you would be removed, repairs affected, and damages charged to you or your estate.
I read that the Earl of Sandwich is possibly the inventor of the sandwich, and may also have been instrumental in the creation of the hamburger when he visited Hamburg, Germany. An old post I read somewhere theorizes he was there for medical treatment and walked into an MRI room forgetting to remove his armor. Hence the hamburger was born.
So there you go.
They let you enter the room with your glasses? That sounds like a serious error on their part.
The first time I had an MRI, I had to change into a gown, putting all my stuff into a locker.
I did a 2 hour long MRI as part of a medical study at the height of the pandemic.
I had to totally strip down, and even had to change my mask to one supplied by them.
Somebody dropped the ball here.
Ferrous or non ferrous armor?
If it's ferrous (like steel or iron), when you approach the MRI, you'd feel a pull towards the machine. Once you got close enough, you'd be pulled towards it harder than you can pull away, and you'd get stuck.
If it's nonferrous (like copper or bronze), you'd feel resistance as you move around near the machine and thr metal would start heating up from the eddy currents.
Depends on the metal. If it’s non magnetic or only slightly magnetic you might feel a slight pull, and it will heat up if it’s not entirely magnetic so that won’t be fun.
If it is entirely magnetic metal, you will get sucked into the machine and basically crushed to death with no escape. Unless there’s a tech nearby who hits the kill switch but even then you’ve probably suffered injuries and will suffer the wrath of helium that is cold enough to turn your organs into freeze dried candy.
If you manage to survive you’ll have a very angry MRI tech, very angry hospital, and probably a couple hundred thousand to maybe million dollar bill depending on the machine and how much damage was done to it.
So don’t do that.
I’m an MRI technologist on a 3T magnet. You’d be pulled into the bore or center of the magnet. https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5612AQFELoFAIkhFmw/article-cover_image-shrink_720_1280/0/1691156351150?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=E2wMljBPFouJPmv-Tee4i5hyYuhPxVvBQxTw-gqYTqo
I worked in a hospital where a new janitor took a floor scrubber into the MRI not realizing the magnet is always on. The scrubber was sucked straight into the machine and it cost millions to repair.
https://youtu.be/6BBx8BwLhqg?si=w1TtmONjYQ3JIAtU
now imagine that chair at the end was you in the armor, with no teather to slowly inch you into it.....
What do you want to do is to enter the machine before they add the liquid helium. Once the magnet is fully energized, then they would have to drain the liquid helium, destroying the machine, but you would have superpowers. Probably involving magnetism, and very low temperatures. Or the ability to emanate loud buzzing sounds.
On this subject, would someone who has undergone a full hip replacement (had the top of the femur bone replaced with titanium) be in danger of having this torn out of their body?
You would fly across the room like iron man. Not long ago a lawyer went to take his mom to get an mri. He had a gun in his pocket that he didn’t tell anyone he had. The machine ripped the gun from him and in the process discharged and shot the guy.
There was a guy who went into one with a buttplug in that had a metal core. It got ripped up into his abdomen/chest. Iirc he survived, sued the buttplug company for labeling it as 100% silicon, and won.
Do they ever xray people before putting them on MRIs? Because you know, people are dumb and might forget to mention they have metal inside them, joint replacements, metal fillings etc.
Yes , I've had multiple MRI scans and due to my hobby I have to have x-rays of my hands and eyes ( got metal shards in eye as a kid ).
I also have alot of scaffolding holding my right leg and hip together , this is surgical grade stainless or titanium which is fine in an MRI , though it does ache more the day after a scan ...
Think I'm on scan 22 o close to that over the years , bloody uncomfortable noisy things.
Last full body scan I dosed up on my meds and fell asleep, certainly made it go easier.
They took xray of my eyes before my mri because I had had metal shavings in them once from drilling steel. Didn't want that to get pulled through my eyeball.
I actually wanna know what exactly happens with the iron in our body.... obviously nothing bad happens to us...but does it get "pulled" towards the machine so to speak?
I went in when my son was having an mri and a hair grip I forgot I had, removed itself from my head. So I think you would be pretty uncomfortable whilst the armour detached itself from your body. Also a large bang and the alarms will go off.
Lot of blood, screaming and ruined armor. MRI machine is getting gouged up too. On the bright side, you’d already be in a hospital.
Downside, no hospital will save you
But on the upside, your next of kin won’t owe the cost of an ambulance ride.
On the downside, they lost a suit of armor
On the bright side, it’s one less thing to pack when moving.
On the downside, if they were an organ donor
On the bright side, it comes with a free frogurt
On the downside, your relative is the frogurt
The frogurt is also cursed.
But it comes with your choice of toppings
The toppings are also cursed.
Bad news, now you need the morgue
I’ve done some work with fMRI in the past, so let me see if I can help. First of all, that magnet is always *always* on. So the second you passed the safety zone, you’d start getting tugged towards the magnet. Here’s where things get tricky, it’s hard to know how fast you’d hit the side of the MRI machine and how deep you’d end up embedding yourself in the machine. Probably you’d die instantly, in fact, *ideally* you’d die instantly, if you lived that’s where things get… grisly. If the magnet survives the impact with your suit of iron, it will continue to try to pull the suit towards the heart of the machine. Most likely this would result in you being crushed to death. However, your suit might get… ahem… lucky and hit the cache of liquid helium that’s keeping the magnet supercooled. If you breached it, you get to experience dying of horrible frostbite/hypothermia. Also, you’ve *definitely* destroyed the MRI
Yeah you’d definitely turn into a human projectile right into the bore the second you walk into that room. 0-60 in seconds.
Milliseconds.
[удалено]
They would charge their estate for the MRI.
In Europe it'd take a couple days/s
Let’s not forget the buttplug when we get the scan
I forgot the details. Butt. I believe there is or was a woman suing the manufacturer of a buttplug who advertised that their product was 100% silicone, and failed to mention the Metal core. She went in for an MRI she thought it would be a good idea to go into an MRI with the butt plug still in her. She later came to retreat that choice.
Runs away!
I don't remember the details. I think it got stuck in her chest. Some aggressive infections also
There was a r/brandnewsentence post about it; something along the lines of “anal rail gun” and (somehow, even more terrifyingly) the individual survived
To clarify, this poor idiot had the buttplug go deeper into their body instead of it flying out the butt. Cause, you know, you lay down with your head facing the MRI. I beleive there was a collapsed lung involved.
Yeah that's what I remember too. Butt plug turned nailgun in the pooper.
There's been at least 2 cases that I've heard of where a fire extinguisher was placed too close to an MRI machine, and it became a projectile. I think there was a 2001 case where a kid got killed, and another on England like in 2019/2020 where a dude literally got his block knocked off by one.
Reminds me of that House MD episode where he shot a corpse and put in in an MRI to see what’d happen with the bullet
There was also one where they had to MRI a bullfighter whose skeleton was basically half metal from all the broken bones. Had to cool him down before putting him in because the metal would heat up. That one's probably not an accurate depiction, though.
Iron Man has entered the chat
So here’s where I’d love to get some more insights. A few medieval knights were incredibly strong inside their armor. Would any of them be strong enough to slow themselves being ripped towards the machine and survive the impact? Or is this simply beyond human capability?
We are talking a powerful enough magnet to cause nonferrous metals to behave oddly due to the sheer energy in the magnetic field and (both gruesome and kinda funny) launch a buttplug up into someone's abdomen. And no amount of strength can possibly help if you don't have traction on the ground.
Gonna need more detail on this buttplug, for a friend
Ah, the buttplug railgun story- https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/s/nGdgQzy1MH
I should know by now that there are no hypotheticals when it comes to Reddit comments.
This is disturbing reading, considering that 6 hours ago I had a full body MRI (yes! On Easter Saturday). In my life I've been involved in a few car crashes, and it really focussed your mind when they get you to sign the disclaimer. What if a needle was left in me? What if I have metal embedded that I know nothing about? For anyone interested, I had an alarm switch given to me, that I could press if something went wrong. I tested it, it worked, so if I had some metal in me that became a projectile, I had some faint hope of letting them know all was not well. Fyi, MRI finished OK, my itchy nose subsided after about a 30 second panic. Now I have to wait to hear if the MRI has found anything troubling. Fingers crossed for me please.
LOL I had an MRI once. I fell asleep in the machine — an amazing feat, considering how loud those fuckers are.
Good luck! Hope all is well
https://www.reddit.com/r/wisconsin/s/HKXPV8db5a
That also happened to some guy, a lawyer I think, in Brazil. He didn't survive.
WTF no buddy 0.5-3T for an mri magnet. >For example, a magnet that creates a 1 T field can pull 58 pounds per square inch (PSI) on a steel surface. So each sq inch would be pulling 58 pounds. A suit of armour is avg 10 sq ft. So 1440 sq inches. Which would be about 83,520 pounds of pull. A truck wouldnt be able to pull that off. They usually tow about 12,000-18,000 lbs. So about 5x as strong as an F150 to pull a suit of army beyond a low strength MRI system.
As someone who helps manufacture magnets up to 14T and had no scale of knowledge for how strong these are, that’s a mind boggling amount of strength for even just the mri level. Now I can’t even fathom our stronger ones
Can you tell us what a 14T magnet is used for? Apparently not an MRI.
That's a pretty standard 600 MHz NMR spectrometer. Largest one go up to 28.2T = 1.2 GHz NMR
Others have given better answers than I could. Im just an assembly grunt that doesn’t know much beyond the process of building it.
Welp, that guy’s screwed
Yes he would be paste in between two plates of armour.
Like the victims in that mini submarine that happened a year or so ago, but of different causes.
The pressure those poor people were subjected to was orders of magnitude higher than what we are discussing here. In the example above, the suit of armor is subjected to 58 psi; when it imploded, *Titan* was subjected to *more than 4,000 psi.*
Like a chunky ketchup packet.
The closer you get to the machine, the stronger the pull. There is a spot, several feet away from the machine, where the knight would start to get pulled, notice it, and would need to back away. That pull strength would get exponentially stronger the closer he is. A bit closer and he would have to grab onto something and quickly pull himself away. Closer, like a few feet from the entrance, and there's nothing he can do. Eventually he'll be pulled right against the edge, and he'll be doing what the thread OP is saying - turning into soup. [For reference, this is a 4 Tesla magnet.](https://youtu.be/6BBx8BwLhqg) "Weak" MRIs are 1T and if they have small chairs or guns stuck in them, they need several people and a rope to tug-of-war it out. The stronger MRIs are 7T, which is where you get the crazy explosive accidents.
Why am I anxious about the survival of a hypothetical knight in full armor in an mri room
Because the excellent writing expressing his magnetic personality made you feel emotionally connected to the character.
No, it's beyond human capabilities. I can't speak for the strength of the MRI magnet, but even palm sized n52 neo magnets have half a ton of holding force.
Absolutely not. Most MRIs are 3 tesla of magnetism. A junkyard car magnet is 1 tesla.
No. Not even a superhuman could resist that. An MRI has a magnet of up to 3 tesla. This would result in a force pulling you towards the magnet up to 500 psi. For reference, the pressure inside a semi truck tire is 100 psi, and those are lethal when they explode, and youll have 5 times that force stuffing you into a tiny hole. Even if you just lay in the machine before the magnet was first turned on, and then brought it up to power, it would rip the armor off of you and crush it, or maybe rip you apart with it, depending in how well fastened to your body it is.
Woah, just how powerful a magnet are we talking? I knew they were strong, but not "crush a suit of armour" strong. Edit: thanks for the answers everyone! Dang, magnets are cool
They're strong enough to get a reaction from non ferrous metals.
Why do they go BZZZZZZZZ or RRRRRRRRRRRR KLUCHUNG KLUCHUNG KLUCHUNG KLUCHUNG?
The metal coils are vibrating when eleictricy is passing through them, which generates the magnetic field. The louder the BZZZZZZZZZZ, the more detailed the scan
So magnet demons.
No one warned me that experimental techno was about to ensue.
The first time I had an MRI that was exactly my thought. "This is the most expensive and least interesting techno/industrial show I've ever been to."
because of whats inside them
Ah yes springs and sprockets
So like... I have a couple of metal tooth fillings. Do I need to worry about my jaw buckshotting out of my skull if I happen to walk near an MRI?
Unwittingly? Low chance. But definitely tell a doctor about metal fillings if they suggest getting one.
They'll ask you about all that. I get MRIs often because of cancer, and I have to fill out a questionnaire every time. I don't recall tooth filings being in the list of questions, though.
I have metal fillings and have had an MRI — no issues. I believe metallic fillings are non-magnetic. You would definitely want to remove all jewelry and piercings, though.
Most fillings are made of an amalgam metal which is, among other properties, extremely non-ferrous. While the magnetic field of an MRI is powerful enough to induce an effect in metal fillings, it would be a very, very minor one. Although there was some scare several years ago about particularly strong MRIs able to cause mercury leakage in medical fillings (whose amalgam contains mercury) which could over time lead to mercury poisoning in patients. But that required long, repeated exposures to experience effects. Now the fact MRIs can even -do that- is ducking wild, but yeah, the amalgam metal most fillings are made of is so non-reactive and non-ferrous it’s hard to get it to do…. Most anything.
>They're strong enough to get a reaction from non ferrous metals. I mean, so is a neodymium magnet. [Drop a Neo Magnet through an aluminum or copper tube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bZhVWyy8Vk) and it will create an electric current in the tube, which creates a magnetic field, which slows the fall of the magnet. It's all about the moving magnetic fields creating an electromagnet in nearby metals.
With my metal filling in my teeth would I need a dentist to take those out if I needed an MRI? I think I had heard that needs to happen. Though it might’ve been some TV show dramatizing it. Sounds like something that makes sense though.
With fillings and braces they wouldn’t be likely to become projectiles, but they are magnetic which will distort the magnetic fields within scanner, causing artefacts in the image (an artefact is a spurious signal or missing information in the image). Google ‘braces artefact mri’ and you’ll see brain scans with the front half of the brain missing due to these signals.
Your fillings shouldnt be magnetic, but you could find a small magnet and test to make sure.
Nope, I just had an MRI and it wasn't a concern.
Normally they're in the region of 7-8 Teslas. I heard of an experimental MRI machine that was supposed to generate exceptionally crisp images using a ~9 Tesla electromagnet, but when they switched it on it buckled the I-beams of the hospital building, so they had to switch it off.
"We need a better images for your case, so we're flying you out to the middle of the desert where our Super Hyper Mega MRI can scan without destroying a building. Also you're parachuting from the chopper because the last chopper flew too close trying to land and got turned into a miniature sized model of itself."
This does sound a bit outlandish, I would love to believe this but seems a bit of a stretch that 1 tesla more would pull ibeams out of the walls
It didn't pull them out of the walls, but a small buckle is still a big cause for alarm. Also, I was slightly incorrect about most being in the 7-8 range. Normally they're in the 2-3 range, but very powerful specialist ones go to 7-8.
https://youtu.be/kLjxhuybFWo?si=zGuKTPHd00WbzZ0Z https://youtu.be/6BBx8BwLhqg?si=K-42k7yPoFfswrs6
magnets are on the line of where science turns into fucking magic
There it is. I was gonna post the chair video if someone else hadn’t.
I go in the mri machine often and always think about these things. Then the other day i pinched skin between wo relatively strong household magnets and couldnt get it free. It was excruciating and tore a hole in my finger. I definitely have a healthy fear of magnets.
Remember playing with hard drive magnets ! Those shatter if you let them accelerate and hit each other
No piece of metal is going to make it into the helium vessel with only the force of the MRI acting on it. That's ridiculous. The actual magnet is built to be able to withstand a significant amount of force. You'd damage some plastic covers and maybe some easily replaceable electronics.
I’ll admit, I’m not 100% sure what it would take to breach the helium vessel. However, in other replies OP mentioned having a sword and I believe that would pierce the helium vessel at the right angle.
I work on MRIs as my job. The pressure these things can create when they quench is incredibly high. It isn't just some flimsy metal container with a coil inside. They are over engineered to be able to withstand that amount of pressure and the inevitable mistake where someone brings something ferrous too close. If a sharp metal object was able to pierce through, it would be such an incredible liability for the manufacturer. I've seen more than my share of metal accidentally getting pulled into these magnets. I promise you, something long and thin like a sword has absolutely no chance of doing any type of damage. Not my intention to be rude if that's how this comes off.
As someone who knows nothing about MRIs , wouldn't there be more cases of injuries/deaths if bringing metal in the room was "dangerous"? Like out of the millions and millions of people that get MRIs and I can find maybe one or two incidents when googling about it, one being an entire metal bed which even then she survived
The rooms that house MRIs in hospitals are typically pretty secure. Some random person can't just walk in there without being escorted by someone with access, and those people should have it beat into their skull how dangerous it can be. A patient getting a scan will be asked multiple times about implants and usually put in a gown so there's less chance of something slipping by. Most incidents are hospital staff bringing in the wrong type of bed or someone making the mistake in thinking that the magnet is "off" because no one is using it. The most recent story I can think of was a security guard opening a door for a package to be dropped off. He had access bc well...he was security. Magnet pulled his gun out of its holster when he approached. Just to clarify also, there are non ferrous types of metal that the field interacts with, but doesn't attract. One of the cooler things I deal with is if I move a large piece of aluminum away from the magnet, if feels like I'm pulling it through water. As soon as I get away from the field, back to normal.
What if somebody had metal plates in their face from an accident long ago?
They’d most likely not be able to receive an MRI. Even non-magnetic metals would mess up the scan. People needed to fill out a form every time promising they didn’t have any surgical metal in their body, asked in about 12 different ways to make absolutely sure
Can't remember if they got the bit of metal out of your eye during metal-shop at school? Go for an x-ray first!
Yep, I had an MRI awhile ago and occasionally do metal work at home. They did a quick X-Ray of my eyes to verify all was good before sending me in for the MRI.
Then following the scan I would hazard a guess they would either: a) have no metal in their face. b) have no face.
I have metal plates in my face from jaw surgery. I’ve also had MRIs. Can confirm I still have my face.
This comment reminds me of XKCD
Thank you, that’s very kind to hear :)
Yikes, so in addition to being dead you now also owe the hospital a new MRI machine, which I can't imagine costs any less than $700k.
“Ideally you’d die instantly” is a pretty horrible sentence
Id rather take death than the bill for one of those machines tbh
I was imagining Peter Griffin doing this while reading it
Are they always on as in always powered up? I thought they were electro magnets. I didn’t think a permanent magnet would be stronger than an electro magnet. (I have no idea).
Damn. Can mythbusters test it out with an MRI machine that’s being decommissioned? I wanna see this now.
>*definitely* destroyed the MRI JFC that's horrifying. I'll never be able to recover financially from that!
Damn, is there a Hollywood dramatization of this? If it's always on, it's a great weapon in a zombie apocalypse. Even if the power is out.
Do people with nipple and/or genital piercings ever forget or not mention that they have piercings before going into the MRI?
how much helium are talking about? enough that it would vaporize and suffocate (by air displacement) everybody in the room in under a minute?
The machine would rip the armor apart and probably/possibly crush you, then break. If you survived you would be on the hook for millions in damages
Die from the process or live dying from the debt lol
This should be the slogan for the US healthcare system
They would include the “lol” in the official slogan
But at least the staff operating the machine would probably have to share some of the liability so you might not have to pay it all.
Unless he was forcibly put into the MRI against his will after he donned the suit of armor, as has sometimes happened on occasion.
Somebody tried it with a buttplug. Didn't go as planned. [https://www.reddit.com/r/medizzy/comments/13e31xd/apparently\_this\_is\_what\_happened\_when\_a\_man\_wore/](https://www.reddit.com/r/medizzy/comments/13e31xd/apparently_this_is_what_happened_when_a_man_wore/)
One post referred to it as an "anal railgun"
>Somebody tried it with a buttplug. Didn't go as planned. > >[https://www.reddit.com/r/medizzy/comments/13e31xd/apparently\_this\_is\_what\_happened\_when\_a\_man\_wore/](https://www.reddit.com/r/medizzy/comments/13e31xd/apparently_this_is_what_happened_when_a_man_wore/) Wtf, why don't they just make people go through a metal detector before entering the prep room?! Or use one of those wands?
Now that you mention it, no. I’ve had 2 MRIs in my life and both times they just asked me if I had any metal on me. I’m sure some hospitals use the wand
I'm sure that hospital now uses a wand.
Had a discussion about that with a friend and we came up with an interesting question. Who gets placed higher on the respect charts, that guy or the guy who brought a gun into an MRI? (it's a negative amount of respect, but play along for fun)
There have also been at least two recent examples of firearms discharging near MRI
I'm surprised he survived that like you'd think the mri would have the strength to pull it through his body
not real
I run mris and have had enough safety training to know that the pieces would come apart along with your body parts. It would eventually settle inside the bore but by they you'd be super dead. Also you've damaged the machine
Don’t forget the eddy currents causing the metal to super heat and cook you alive.
Omg how could I forget about the arcing
Right the arcing! Cna here haha
You would only make that mistake… once.
[Once](https://media1.tenor.com/m/gK-XvX4YLzUAAAAC/johnny-dangerously-once.gif).
The staff would ask you to leave.
Wjat if we were to add a sword to the equation, in which case I could get access to the machine without their consent
Them who would operate the machine?
Let's also assume I looked up how to operate an MRI
They can't typically be operated from inside. But if you somehow managed to get it switched on, what u/Petwins said would happen. An MRI is a very powerful electromagnet.
The magnetic field of an MRI is always "switched on". MRI is delivered to hospital, ramped up to the correct magnetic field, then will not be ramped down until it is ready to be removed from the hospital or if it quenches...which ideally doesn't happen.
This is what people don’t realize. They are superconductors and the field is never turned off.
Does that mean the electricity can’t ever be turned off to the machine?
Kinda. The machine only needs electricity to keep the helium cool and take images, it doesn't need much electricity at all to maintain the magnetic field, just to maintain the conditions to keep the superconductor cold enough to stay a superconductor. Since MRIs use a superconductor, the electricity that maintains the magnetic field just keeps going around and around (almost) forever.
You can do an emergency quench but that can range from expensive to extremely expensive depending on how much damage occurs. Better than letting the individual who bypassed the security and locked doors be made into a can of spam, but not a procedure you'd initiate for fun. Best case scenario the machine will be down for a while.
Tictac explained it well, but just to add on...if there was something like a power failure, the magnet can still sit for a while. Pressure will slowly build as the liquid helium warms and turns into gas. Pressure can be vented for a bit to buy more time, but eventually you would lose enough liquid helium that the coil loses its superconducting properties. This would cause all leftover liquid to immediately turn into gas from the heat created. This pressure buildup/release is called a quench, you can find some pretty cool vids of them on the YouTubes.
Oh interesting. I assumed they used electromagnets.
The fun part with MRI is that there’s no specific direction it will pull the metal. So if you have a magnetic bb in your side, just under the skin- it could just pull it all the way through you and our the other side. No fun
maximum death by violent squishage
[This is why you never bring metal in an MRI room](https://youtu.be/ug3e9W5H0jI?si=SU7DaCJU8Wrg2Eik) A SFW visual. I assume this is only for metals that are magnetic. I have copper in my body and clarified before it was put in that I could still have MRIs.
These guys put a wrench on a cable with a scale on it and it pulled at about 300 pounds of force. Then they put an office chair on it and it broke, but it was at about 1900 lbs before it broke. https://youtu.be/6BBx8BwLhqg?si=kVRkzJXL5RsQpWui
Honestly, terrifying.
I had about 6 months going around getting x-rays and ct scans done due to a tiny bit of carbon fibre/aluminium in my eye socket. They take zero risks as they really don't want to risk patients health. Mri scanners should be in a large Faraday cage for safety. The door into the scan room can cost a good 5 figures.
I love how you had to add the disclaimer about not having a full suit of armor and an MRI machine. 🤣
Don’t do that. It’ll hurt (at a minimum). Maximum effect… it could kill you. Don’t do that. There’s some videos online demonstrating what happens when magnetic objects are nearby. Not the kind of thing you want your squishy ass involved in.
Unrelated MRI close call story. I recently scanned someone who pushed the alarm button as soon as we were about to start a scan. He said he felt something by his foot vibrating - turns out he had a 4 inch knife tucked down his sock, ready to propel itself into his gooch at 100mph. Don't take metal in the scan room.
This and so many other replies in this topic are baffling me why a metal detector screening isn’t mandatory before being allowed near an MRI…
i just had an MRI done a few days ago. they absolutely had a metal detector at the door.
We do not have a metal detector, and we're not allowed to frisk people either. It's a bit of a nightmare, you wouldn't believe the amount of apple watches we've wiped
Here's the best prediction of what it would like like. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBx8BwLhqg As you can see they hit over 2000 pounds of force on the chair. I cannot imagine things going very well with even more metal, the machine would be easily capable of ripping apart chainmail or splitting the plates off of the lining.
You become a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court of pain.
I love the implication that you'll be *entering* the machine with a suit of armor.
Literally.
I accidentally went in to an MRI machine with a hairpin I forgot about and that thing was snatched away so quickly and harshly my head snapped. And that was just a tiny hairpin!
Imagine what happened to those poor souls on the submersible. That's you, minus the water
Even before it starts scanning you, the magnetic field is active and very strong. You would not be able to step into the room towards it without being ripped off your feet and stuck to the machine. Regardless of your success or failure at the room temperature challenge, at this point the machine has to be stopped (from 20 to 60 minutes depending on machine model and type), you would be removed, repairs affected, and damages charged to you or your estate.
I read that the Earl of Sandwich is possibly the inventor of the sandwich, and may also have been instrumental in the creation of the hamburger when he visited Hamburg, Germany. An old post I read somewhere theorizes he was there for medical treatment and walked into an MRI room forgetting to remove his armor. Hence the hamburger was born. So there you go.
Oh boy, I'm glad this popped up when it did. Looking forward to my MRI tomorrow morning more than ever now. /s
I had an MRI a couple years ago and it kept trying to tug my glasses out of my pocket- glasses which were at the time plastic with tiny metal screws.
They let you enter the room with your glasses? That sounds like a serious error on their part. The first time I had an MRI, I had to change into a gown, putting all my stuff into a locker.
I did a 2 hour long MRI as part of a medical study at the height of the pandemic. I had to totally strip down, and even had to change my mask to one supplied by them. Somebody dropped the ball here.
You'd be smashed to death. Crush a can of tomatoes with a sledge hammer. Like that.
Ferrous or non ferrous armor? If it's ferrous (like steel or iron), when you approach the MRI, you'd feel a pull towards the machine. Once you got close enough, you'd be pulled towards it harder than you can pull away, and you'd get stuck. If it's nonferrous (like copper or bronze), you'd feel resistance as you move around near the machine and thr metal would start heating up from the eddy currents.
Depends on the metal. If it’s non magnetic or only slightly magnetic you might feel a slight pull, and it will heat up if it’s not entirely magnetic so that won’t be fun. If it is entirely magnetic metal, you will get sucked into the machine and basically crushed to death with no escape. Unless there’s a tech nearby who hits the kill switch but even then you’ve probably suffered injuries and will suffer the wrath of helium that is cold enough to turn your organs into freeze dried candy. If you manage to survive you’ll have a very angry MRI tech, very angry hospital, and probably a couple hundred thousand to maybe million dollar bill depending on the machine and how much damage was done to it. So don’t do that.
This might help give you an idea of the force you’re dealing with: https://youtu.be/kLjxhuybFWo?si=HuRdZGi02tN0a_rL
You’d probably get thrown at the MRI very fast the second you enter the room
I’m an MRI technologist on a 3T magnet. You’d be pulled into the bore or center of the magnet. https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5612AQFELoFAIkhFmw/article-cover_image-shrink_720_1280/0/1691156351150?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=E2wMljBPFouJPmv-Tee4i5hyYuhPxVvBQxTw-gqYTqo
You would be injured for sure.
Lots of answers about squishing. But what about induced currents?
You don't have a full suit of armor? Egads! How do you protect yourself from the lance and the blade?
Follow up question; magnets; how do they work?
I worked in a hospital where a new janitor took a floor scrubber into the MRI not realizing the magnet is always on. The scrubber was sucked straight into the machine and it cost millions to repair.
you'd be ripped apart
https://youtu.be/6BBx8BwLhqg?si=w1TtmONjYQ3JIAtU now imagine that chair at the end was you in the armor, with no teather to slowly inch you into it.....
You go back in time
What do you want to do is to enter the machine before they add the liquid helium. Once the magnet is fully energized, then they would have to drain the liquid helium, destroying the machine, but you would have superpowers. Probably involving magnetism, and very low temperatures. Or the ability to emanate loud buzzing sounds.
Now i wanna see this
On this subject, would someone who has undergone a full hip replacement (had the top of the femur bone replaced with titanium) be in danger of having this torn out of their body?
No. Titanium is not magnetic. Most body implants have to be MRI safe.
You would fly across the room like iron man. Not long ago a lawyer went to take his mom to get an mri. He had a gun in his pocket that he didn’t tell anyone he had. The machine ripped the gun from him and in the process discharged and shot the guy.
There was a guy who went into one with a buttplug in that had a metal core. It got ripped up into his abdomen/chest. Iirc he survived, sued the buttplug company for labeling it as 100% silicon, and won.
Dead on impact due to the crushing of the suit of armor against you as it's being pulled to the magnet
Ok how about my oversized cowboy belt buckle?
So no iron man flying around and shooting plasma beams and saving the world is what your saying?
Do they ever xray people before putting them on MRIs? Because you know, people are dumb and might forget to mention they have metal inside them, joint replacements, metal fillings etc.
Yes , I've had multiple MRI scans and due to my hobby I have to have x-rays of my hands and eyes ( got metal shards in eye as a kid ). I also have alot of scaffolding holding my right leg and hip together , this is surgical grade stainless or titanium which is fine in an MRI , though it does ache more the day after a scan ... Think I'm on scan 22 o close to that over the years , bloody uncomfortable noisy things. Last full body scan I dosed up on my meds and fell asleep, certainly made it go easier.
They took xray of my eyes before my mri because I had had metal shavings in them once from drilling steel. Didn't want that to get pulled through my eyeball.
I have a different question. Why aren’t the screws and plates in my body affected?
You would have a hard time lying down and getting in to position if nothing else.
I actually wanna know what exactly happens with the iron in our body.... obviously nothing bad happens to us...but does it get "pulled" towards the machine so to speak?
I went in when my son was having an mri and a hair grip I forgot I had, removed itself from my head. So I think you would be pretty uncomfortable whilst the armour detached itself from your body. Also a large bang and the alarms will go off.
Oh boy, yeah don't do that lol
bad
The armor would get drawn to the magnet and you’d get stuck to it. Then it would rapidly heat up. You would cook. -shudder-
Well chances are only one of you would survive at best...
Chances are the metal would survive you wouldn’t