Say you were able to MacGyver the microwave to bypass the safety features and run with the door open, what would happen? Three mile island?
How unsafe would it be to be in the same room while it was operating? Over what period of time, if any would exposure be lethal?
You’d have to position yourself in front of the open chamber door to intercept a significant amount of the radiation. Microwaves are long-wavelength electromagnetic radiation; each photon by itself has insufficient energy to break the molecular bonds in your body in the same way that UV/X-rays/gamma rays do. Instead, they dissipate their energy as heat, warming up your body the same way they do food. You’d start to get warm, then uncomfortably warm, then painfully hot. If you were tied down, you’d cook; the rate of temperature rise would depend on how dispersed the microwave beam is when it hits your body. If you weren’t tied down, you’d (involuntarily) jump out of the beam at some point in that progression.
If you’ve ever put metal in a microwave, then you know that that it can induce high voltages (and currents). This guy shows what can be done if the magnetron is removed from an oven and fitted with a steel can to direct the output; he’s able to light lightbulbs and short out portable radios and such.
First of all, there’s no “radiation” in a microwave in the way that the term “radiation” is commonly used.
Electromagnetic radiation is a whole bunch of things, starting with long waves (which are useful for transmitting messages through polar ice but not much else), then radio waves, shorter wavelength radio waves called microwaves, infra-red light, visible light, ultra-violet light, x-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays. Once you get part way through the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, the electromagnetic radiation becomes “ionizing”. What this means is that the electromagnetic wave can strip the electrons off of atoms and create ions. Ionizing radiation is what is responsible for most of the fading damage done to clothes, cars, and other objects left out in the sun for extended periods of time. Ionizing radiation also causes cell damage and cancer. So ultra-violet light, x-rays, gamma rays, and cosmic rays are all ionizing, and that’s your 3-mile island type of radiation (basically). Visible light, infra-red, microwaves, radio waves, and long waves are not ionizing. They aren’t your 3-mile island type of radiation.
That doesn’t mean that these longer wavelength (and lower frequency) waves are completely harmless. Concentrate enough energy in those waves, and you can easily cook things, like cooking ants with a magnifying glass as some kids do, and you wouldn’t want to stand in front of a very powerful Hollywood style spotlight. Use a bunch of mirrors, and you can focus the mostly visible light from the sun into a single point and create enough heat to melt salt (there are power generators based on this).
And, of course, this is how your microwave oven cooks food. It throws a whole bunch of microwave radio waves into the little box, which heats your food up.
Inside the microwave oven, the size of the box is such that the radio waves are usually set up in what is called a standing wave. In other words, the wavelength evenly divides into the size of the box.
Since you still probably have no idea what I’m talking about, the radio waves look like this:
They don’t just all bounce around randomly inside the box. This is why microwave ovens have hot spots and cold spots. Any place where the standing wave is at a peak is a hot spot, and any place where the standing wave is at its minimum is a cold spot.
So what happens if you rig it so that it will still work if you open the door? Well, now your nice even standing wave ends up just bouncing out randomly outside of the box. If you get close enough to the box you could end up with a microwave burn. Radio wave burns are really nasty, because the microwave radio waves penetrate into your skin and cause deep tissue burns. If you aren’t too close to the microwave oven though, you probably aren’t going to feel anything. Again, because of the geometry of the room and whatever, you are going to end up with some places that are hotter spots than others as you scatter out away from the microwave oven, but generally speaking, the farther away from the box you are, the less radio waves you’ll receive and the less you’ll heat up. You could probably stand in most areas of the room and not feel a thing, and not be harmed in any way either.
Because microwave radio waves are not ionizing, they mainly damage you through heat, so you would know very quickly if your body was absorbing any damaging levels of radio waves. Most people don’t stand still while they are being burned, so anyone getting a radio wave burn would likely move out of the way very quickly.
This is in sharp contrast to ionizing radiation. You can receive a fatal dose of x-rays or gamma rays and not really feel much of anything at first. Your first clue that something was wrong would come some time later (several minutes to several hours, depending on how much radiation you were exposed to) when you started to get nauseous. Then you would get sicker and sicker, and within days, or maybe weeks, you would die.
Considering Three Mile Island incident resulted in zero off site impact, it would be worse for you than that. But barely.
But of course, that depends on your definition of “worse for you”
Some might argue that the REAL impact of Three mile Island was the panic over nuclear power which resulted in everyone being denied cheap power, which in turn may have caused you to spend way more of the course of your life on power that you could’ve used for healthcare.
Of course, contemplating bypassing safty features of any kind kinda gives me the impression you don’t really care about that, and also, my kind of guy.
And your food would probably cook very poorly, or spottily, with the door open on the microwave.
People in the room who had a pacemaker might have it malfunction (though I believe newer models are less likely to have such problems).
Have you ever tried to cook a chicken in a microwave oven? Takes forever. Humans are much bigger than chickens and with no metal box to keep the microwaves from escaping, it’ll be a really, really long time until you’re fully cooked. Standing in the sunlight is probably faster.
It’ll be murder on your wifi, though.
you get a less controlled version of this
Another interesting tidbit of info:
If you run the microwave oven with the door open for 10 minutes, it will heat up the room.
If you run the microwave oven with the door closed for 10 minutes, it will heat up the room.
The amount of heat generated in #1 is the same as #2. In other words, you will heat up the room the same amount regardless if the door is open or closed.
It just distributes the heat a little differently in your room.
Your refrigerator (whether open or closed) does the same, by the way.
Technicians at microwave radio stations in WWII used to stand in front of the emitter to warm up.
I was watching Demolition Ranch on YouTube the other day. He cut the frittered screen so he could shoot video of a Glock with a round chambered. It erased the SD card in his Go Pro. It also melted the Glock before the round cooked off. The Go Pro was fine after restarting. The SD card, not so much.
Nitpick: cosmic rays are not EM radiation. They’re various particles accelerated to very high velocities. Many of the particles are atomic nuclei, but they are also electrons, positrons and other particles.
There’s also a band in between microwaves and infrared called either submillimeter waves or terahertz radiation.
I had a g/f who many here would consider of the tinfoil hat wearing type. Actually she took down paneling to put up a metallic foil then replaced the paneling. She relayed to me storied of gas lighting (gang stalking), where someone might rent a apartment next to the victim just to plug a microwave or 2 in taking the door off and pointing it into the victim’s apartment and having it run 24/7. The goal was to cause the victim to feel sickly, that combined with other efforts would just have that person live in misery, both by effecting their health and by just interfering with their daily lives in a non-identifying way, such as when in a supermarket have random people just clog up the isle that the victim is shopping in, blocking them in etc.
She was a lot of fun to be with in many ways.
**What happens if you rig the microwave to run with the door open? **
Anyone can walk into your house while you are making popcorn.
Go on …
Many spiritual ways and experiences and revelations such as the origins of life, very deep level conversations, experiences, and a exploration of various faiths and practices including my major exposure to the wonderfulness of native America spirituality and the connection to the earth they share and a degree of care free freedom we seldom get to have in this world.
But we always used the microwave oven with the door properly attached and closed without defeating the safety devices as specified by the owner’s manual. We practiced safe microwaving.
Mmmmm, fritters.
(fritted?)
I hope not. I was really looking forward to screen fritters. As you say, “yum.”
Also, “melted the Glock”? Was this one of the rare experimental autoloader pistols fabricated from butter? :rolleyes:
How many times do we have to tell people: Do NOT stick your **** in the crazy.
They are plastic (or “composite”), right? I dunno how easy it is to melt, but it probably wouldn’t be TOO hard.