There are darker reasons people are drawn to the quiet. ''You have to turn off your hearing aids,' she actually said to one person,' Kurczy said. Electrosensitivity is not limited to WiFi, but lights, fish tanks, and other devices. 'Diane Schou pushed the county's tolerance of outsiders to a new limit,' the book states. 'WiFi refugees' who believe, with little evidence to back them up, that exposure to electromagnetic fields makes them sick have emerged as an unlikely ally to the observatory.Дiane Schou, an 'electrosensitive' profiled by Kurczy, advertises the Quiet Zone as a safe haven but has caused tensions with locals due to 'really stringent calls for quiet.' 'There now appeared to be more WiFi signals than homes, if that was even possible,' Kurczy states in his book. 'If a minister was willing to lie, who else was? How much more pervasive could it be?'ДЄ 'Quiet Zone cop', who monitors technology breaches, reported 175 WiFi hotspots within two miles of the observatory - outnumbering the 150 households in that radius. 'In what other places in the world do people feel shame or guilt over having WiFi?' Kurczy told Insider, describing the moment a minister admitted having WiFi after claiming otherwise. Kurczy found that most locals want WiFi - or they already have it, illegally. The Green Bank community's support for the observatory has begun to slide, despite it proving itself as a strong education and economic partner. It also protects Sugar Grove, an NSA spy station.ДЄuthor Stephen Kurczy reveals a county in conflict in his new book 'The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence.' The zone protects the work of the Green Bank Observatory, which requires radio silence to detect radio waves emitted by stars and pulsars.

Astronomers, neo-Nazis, spies, and people who believe they get sick from technology are those who made the pilgrimage to the county, home to 8,450. The West Virginian region is home to the National Radio Quiet Zone - a legislated 13,000-square mile area of radio silence where cell service and most electronics, including WiFi, are banned or heavily restricted. Stephen Kurczy spent 3 years researching the area and told Insider it's drawn everyone from neo-Nazis to 'electrosensitives.'ДЄnyone headed to Pocahontas County, deep in the Appalachian mountains, will find failing cell service and sparse WiFi hotspots.The WiFi-free zone is an anomaly given 97% of Americans use a smartphone, per Pew.Most electronics are banned in the area around the Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia.

Radio silence zone west virginia