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This West Virginia Town Has Gone Radio Silent: Greetings from the Quiet Zone
Illustration by Max Temescu
The town of Green Bank, West Virginia, sits at the heart of the National Radio Quiet Zone, where cellphones, Wi-Fi routers, and broadcast antennas are all but absent. For most, it is a throwback to a different era. But for an increasing number of new residents, it is a rare refuge from wireless technology. Welcome to the fringe of the electromagnetic age.
One day in 2003, Diane Schou’s hair started falling out. She got rashes and lingering headaches. Her doctor didn’t know what was causing her symptoms, but Diane began to have her suspicions. She’d fallen ill around the same time a new cellphone tower went up near her Iowa farm. When she drove by the tower, her headaches worsened. So she and her husband, Bert, jumped in their Winnebago and fled. Diane didn’t know what she was running from. All she knew was that she felt better the farther she got from that cell tower, and civilization in general.
Months after leaving Iowa, while stopped at a state park in North Carolina, a forest ranger told the Schous about a place called Green Bank, West Virginia. It was in the middle of something called the National Radio Quiet Zone. So the Schous went to Green Bank for a few days. It was a nice place, but they quickly moved on, like gypsies of the electromagnetic age, searching for somewhere insulated from the technology now synonymous with modern society. Along the way, Diane learned that her affliction had a name–electrohypersensitivity, or EHS–and that there were other electrosensitives like her. She also learned that most doctors don’t believe her condition exists, at least outside of her mind.
Philosophers stone – selected views from the boat
http://philosophers-stone.co.uk
Source: http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2015/04/this-west-virginia-town-has-gone-radio-silent-greetings-from-the-quiet-zone/
