- The brain doesn't have nerve endings, the head would feel like crap though.
- Assuming the person dies then yes
- Unconscious as in asleep or as in knocked out. either way I'd go with they'd feel it, but whether or not it does any good is questionable.
- Magic, end of line.
- You don't need magic to do this, but magic therefore whatever.
- half a brain is doable, the brain stem is a must, no brain whatsoever is not, unless magic.
Be careful though (or write it in cleverly), some people have survived being frozen before. As in blood temperature less than 63F (which is well below clinically dead in biological terms for mammals) and still recovered with little to no damage.
Admittedly such events are damnably rare. Probably greater than billion to one odds.
Freezing biological tissue with mundane means, like liquid Nitrogen causes ice crystals to form in the cells, which destroys them. Instant freezing by definition breaks physics, so it does whatever the plot calls for.
^ Instant freezing does exist naturally. Not exactly on this planet, but expose say water to near absolute zero temperatures and the time to freeze is less than eye-blinkingly short.
There's also an effect observed in the Antarctic where supercooled bodies like that of a fish get immersed in below freezing sea water (which has a lower freezing point) and once they touch a single ice crystal they freeze solid extremely quickly.
Both effects are very conditions driven, but since magic is involved, the physics and biology is not going to be correct either way.
^ That's not exactly what I meant by instant freezing, because that involves cooling stuff down to low temperature without it freezing. I think the OP is talking about vanishing 150 kilojoules of energy (assume brain is 1kg bag of water) into thin air.
(BTW, 150 kilojoules is enough to accelerate a 1kg mass to 550m/s, about 1240mph.)
Brain activity is a function of chemical and electrical reactions going on among billions of neurons. If you magically stopped all that activity at once, I don't think the victim would even know he had died; he wouldn't be able to think or feel anything.
If the freezing does create crystals, there's not much point in reversing the process: the victim is hamburger on a cellular level. If there is time for the crystals to form, then the victim has time to realize something's horribly wrong but not much more. As above, the brain activity would stop. There has been research into freezing people without creating ice crystals, you can probably find something online (I'm too lazy to check).
Under World. It rocks!"Would it go numb? Would it be immensely painful for a little while?"
The brain does not feel pain. If surrounding tissue (eg meninges, the mesh that holds the brain in place) is made uncomfortably cold, that could cause pain while consciousness remains.
The interesting thing about freezing is that it's one of the few reversible forms of brain death (the other is sedatives). You can be basically dead, and if they're careful to warm you up slowly you might still be revived.
If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.Well technically hypothermia is what is revisable. In cold water drowning you can go like an hour or more w/o a breath or heart beat and still have some chance of being brought back. However if tissue freezes solid it’s “hamburger on a cellular level” 100% dead (that’s why people lose limbs to frost bite).
You arn't dead till your warm and dead but if you are frozen solid you're dead.
edited 27th Nov '10 10:21:23 PM by HistoryMaker
Is the rest of the body being frozen with the brain or are we talking about some freaky effect where the brain freezes and the rest of the body is at room/core temperature?
As pointed out, the main problem with cryogenics is the formation of ice crystals, which buggers up the cellular structure leaving useless mush when you thaw it out. I think flash freezing can avoid that which is why it works with, say, sperm samples but not entire, complex organisms. Of course, if you have any sufficiently advanced technology that is indistinguishible from a plot device, er, I mean magic, then you can flash freeze the body from the inside out (microwave refrigerator? That would be nifty for parties) or else some non poisonous "anti-freeze" that prevents crystal formation and allows for super-cooling of the entire body.
If you freeze the brain and the rest of the body is not frozen, then the cells of the body will suffocate, die and eventually rot because the brain is not telling the heart to beat or the diaphragm to breath so respiration and circulation cease.
The other thing that has been experimented with on frogs and such is not freezing but rather slowly lowering the temperature to between 1 degree celcius (just above freezing) an 4 degrees (where water is at maximum density). The animals are clinically dead and then successfully revived, but I am not sure what sort of time frame that have achieved with that.
edited 26th Nov '10 7:24:56 PM by 66Scorpio
Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you are probably right.Yeah, the ice crystals is the major problem with freezing people. the cells swell and burst, and hey! there's not a whole lot of neural function going on afterwards.
but, assuming that you can freeze a brain without reducing it to a soggy mess (big cryonics challenge), you run into another cryonics challenge: microfractures. you see, frozen stuff can sometimes generate tiny hairline fractures within biological tissue. this can be a problem, because you don't know they're there until you a) examin the tissue with a powerful microscope, or b) thaw the tissue and see what problems you have
The terrible downside to multiple identities: multiple tax returnsA possible way to avoid the whole "expansion kills all cells" thing is to not freeze the water into regular ice. Ice III is denser than water, and so would contract upon freezing.
This does run into the slight problem that ice III requires 3000 atmospheres of pressure to form, which would probably be also be fatal. Would still make for good technobabble, though.
Belief or disbelief rests with you.

Literally. Not the slushie kind of thing where you drink too fast.
Would it go numb? Would it be immensely painful for a little while? What if the victim was unconscious(or in that case, would they even feel being killed even if they aren't frozen?) What if it was instantly frozen(assume magic did this?) Would the victim die due to brain death(or something like that?) What would happen if you were to cut the frozen brain in half or something, and then unfreeze it immediately(assume magic is being used again?) Is the rest of the body actually able to do anything by itself without the brain?
If people learned from their mistakes, there wouldn't be this thing called bad habits.