Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

"Wi-Fi Refugees" Shelter in West Virginia Mountains

Posted by samzenpus on from the break-out-the-tinfoil dept.

The 13,000 sq mile U.S. Radio Quiet Zone is an area in West Virginia where all wireless transmissions are banned because of the large number of radio telescopes located there. (This official page shows a map of the Zone; an old Wired article is fascinating reading.) These high-tech telescopes have attracted unlikely neighbors, people who claim to have Wi-Fi allergies. In recent years, scores of people have moved to the area to escape the "damage" that electromagnetic fields can cause them. From the article: "Diane Schou is unable to hold back the tears as she describes how she once lived in a shielded cage to protect her from the electromagnetic radiation caused by waves from wireless communication. 'It's a horrible thing to have to be a prisoner,' she says. 'You become a technological leper because you can't be around people. It's not that you would be contagious to them — it's what they're carrying that is harmful to you.'"

28 of 627 comments (clear)

  1. Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As if the hillbillies out in some of those valleys weren't batshit enough already, now they're inviting in a bunch of tinfoil-hatter paranoid schizos to stay. Expect a significant jump in alien abduction and anal probing reports (above even the current extremely high levels).

    And before everyone gets all offended, I'm not saying EVERYONE is WVa is a hillbilly. But don't even THINK about pretending that *none* of them are. There are some fucking crazy dudes out in those hills, just ask the locals. Oh, not so much the doesn't-wear-shoes-and-makes/drinks-moonshine variety these days--more the has-a-shitload-of-guns-is-trigger-happy-and-makes/uses-crystal-meth types. Equally as violent/well-armed as their isolationist predecessors, but now they're tweaked up on meth and hallucinating too. Mixing those guys with a bunch of tinfoil-hatters who think radio waves are making them sick just cannot lead to happy-happy-joy-joy results. Though it is nice to cordon them off.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by c6gunner · · Score: 5, Funny

      There are some fucking crazy dudes out in those hills, just ask the locals.

      It's not nice to talk about the scientists at the radio telescope observatory that way. I would have thought a site dedicated to geek culture would be a bit more understanding ...

    2. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, FTFA, they HAVE banned most of those things directly around the Radio Telescope. Still and all, the poor afflicted darlings have probably never heard of the inverse square law. Or inverses. Or squares.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by MoonBuggy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Too bad that the 'wireless quiet zone' only refers to a very narrow band of EM radiation.

      If it's enough to quell their psychosomatic symptoms while keeping them out of the way of the rest of us, I'd say it's a win.

    4. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by hrieke · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, having grown up there in West by god Virginia, I can tell you that the Greenbank radio observatory area is very lovely and populated with very smart people doing very good work.

      The Hillbillies that you are talking about are more from Bluefield.

      --
      III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIIIV IIVIIIIIIVIII...
    5. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or the fucking sun, apparently. I trust they're all living several miles below ground.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    6. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Funny

      There was a story on Slashdot a couple of years ago about a mobile company that put up a mast in a village, and started getting complaints from people saying that the transmitter was giving them headaches and so on. They issued quite an amusing press release, saying that they were sorry and they hoped that the symptoms wouldn't get much worse next month when they turned the transmitter on...

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    7. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by thesh0ck · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I bet she is going to be pissed when she finds out there is in fact radio transmissions there... quite a bit of them in fact. The ones that are banned are the ones from outsiders. They transmit thier own radio signals that are accounted for in the science, as are the goverenment radio signals. There is in fact more electro-magnetic radiation in that area than in a city. Its a true lack of understanding of anything in reality that makes these people do these things. After all... light is also electromagnetic radiation, and there is radio waves coming from the sun and stars but she doesnt mention anything about having problems in the sun or looking at the stars. Crackpot ignorant people.

    8. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by inviolet · · Score: 3, Informative

      For years, I couldn't go into the electronics section of retailers because the TVs were screeching so loud that I couldn't think straight. Same goes for some of the devices that stores would use to detect those tags, the amount of power used in those cases is substantially higher, but it's really not productive to suggest that because a claim is strange that it must be false.

      In the case of televisions, we know that many humans can hear the 16-18KHz scan frequency they emit. And you're not hearing the electron beam itself; you are hearing tiny, electromagnetically-induced vibrations in the oscillator circuitry.

      Probably a similar explanation for the RFID scanners. An oscillating circuit can induce physical vibrations at some harmonic of its base frequency, if some component of the device just happens to be resonant at that harmonic.

      My point is, your experiences are easier explained as auditory coincidences than as RF sensitivity.

      --
      FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
    9. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Informative

      Spoken like someone who knows nothing of the south. Lemme guess, you come from California, right?

      No, WV is NOT part of the Bible Belt. It's not even part of the South. In fact, it split away from regular Virginia during the Civil War because that part of the state agreed with the Unionists, while the other part of the state became the capital of the Confederacy.

      The "Bible Belt" is really the Deep South, which is MS, AL, GA, etc. The people of WV probably have a lot more in common with the people of western PA and eastern KY than anyone in the Deep South.

    10. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by Insightfill · · Score: 3, Informative

      There was a story on Slashdot a couple of years ago

      Probably this story from last January.

    11. Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy by RsG · · Score: 3, Informative

      Heard the same story, only it was a ham radio. It's likely apocryphal in any case, though it would not surprise me to learn there's an actual event obscured by the retelling.

      Regardless, the GP has the right idea. I've heard of blind tests of "EM sensitivity" done in the past, with results that unambiguously showed a purely psychosomatic condition - that is to say, the subjects felt sick when they believed they were being exposed, regardless of their actual exposure, and felt fine when they believed they were "safe". But to the patient, this is always going to be met with denial. "Can you believe that doctor thought it was all in my head! Where the hell did he learn medicine? I don't like being called crazy, I'm going to go to my homeopath for advice from now on!"

      Partly this is the fault of our culture labelling all mental health issues under the broad brush of "s/he's crazy". Nobody wants to admit that there could be anything wrong with their head, ergo all psychosomatic illnesses are attributed to external causes, sensible or otherwise. The prevalence of quacks and snake oil salesmen ready to cash in on the latest hysterical bandwagon only makes the problem worse.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
  2. It's contagious, all right by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sorry, Diane, but you are contagious. Just as you learned of this invented disease from someone else, you've undoubtedly passed it along to another hypochondriac. Just because it's not transmitted by biological vectors doesn't mean that it can't spread from person to person.

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    1. Re:It's contagious, all right by madhatter256 · · Score: 4, Funny

      No use telling her... she won't be able to read this comment...

      --
      Previewing comments are for sissies!
    2. Re:It's contagious, all right by trout007 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You are pretty close. I have environmental allergies (dust, pollen, ect). So I get allergy shots which builds up my tolerance. It works great. The same thing with peanuts. My kid had allergies and we had him tested for everything and he was allergic to peanuts. When he ate peanut butter he would get red in the face and complain about an itchy throat. They don't do shots for food. So we started building his tolerance by giving him smaller doses that he could handle an slowly built up. It is working just like the shots.

      So what you said is correct. If parents keep shielding their kids from things they are allergic to they will never build up immunity to them.

      --
      I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
    3. Re:It's contagious, all right by savi · · Score: 3, Informative

      Be careful. Some allergies, like food allergies or poison ivy, get WORSE with each exposure. Some people just have itchy throat from nuts until one day they stop breathing after eating some.

  3. From Wikipedia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity :

    The majority of provocation trials to date have found that self-described sufferers of electromagnetic hypersensitivity are unable to distinguish between exposure to real and fake electromagnetic fields,[2][3] and it is not recognized as a medical condition by the medical or scientific communities.[4]

    [2] Rubin, James; J Das Munshi J, Simon Wessely (March–April 2005). "Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: a systematic review of provocation studies". Psychosomatic Medicine 67 (2): 224–32. doi:10.1097/01.psy.0000155664.13300.64. PMID 15784787.
    [3] Röösli M (June 2008). "Radiofrequency electromagnetic field exposure and non-specific symptoms of ill health: a systematic review". Environ. Res. 107 (2): 277–87. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2008.02.003. PMID 18359015.
    [4] http://www.cdc.gov/search.do?q=%22Electromagnetic+hypersensitivity%22+&btnG.x=20&btnG.y=5&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&ud=1&site=default_collection

    1. Re:From Wikipedia... by Jthon · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's not radiation, that's because cheap CRTs tubes oscillate at 60 hertz and if you're not deaf in the upper frequencies you can hear them whine. Basically it's noise from the flyback transformer in the CRT. Many children can hear them but people often lose those frequencies as they get older.

      I can still hear when a cheap CRT is on but I don't claim to be allergic to wifi.

      See http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/crt/failWhine-c.html for some more info.

  4. Is it my imagination... by jbarr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm 45, and while the likes of the Internet and mass-media obviously provide significantly more information than we ever had in the past, I just don't remember so many people having food allergies, aversions, ADD, "sensitivities", or other maladies that are so abundant today. Is it because we are less ignorant and more informed of what were otherwise "hidden" issues, or have we physically evolved into people weaker constitutions?

    --
    My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
  5. Logical treatment. by UncHellMatt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really the best remedy would be homeopathy. What better way to treat an imagined allergy than an imagined cure?

    1. Re:Logical treatment. by LateArthurDent · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm not really defending these people - I make no claims to be affected, and I'm sure most of them are hypochondriacs, but isn't it possible that, out of over 300 million people in the U.S., some of them might actually be more sensitive to the effects of electromagnetic fields than you?

      No, at least now how they describe it.

      They only complain about man-made electromagnetic fields. The Earth has this HUGE magnetic field, maybe you've heard of it. The Sun is positively bombarding us with electromagnetic radiation. Basically, the amount energy from man-made electromagnetic radiation you're exposed to on a regular basis is insignificant compared to the natural kinds. The only difference is that the man-made contains ordered signals instead of being purely random noise. It's limited to particular frequencies instead of being at a broader spectrum. These people moved to a place containing a large number of radio telescopes whose purpose is to, wait for it...detect electromagnetic signals.

      Apparently only man-made EM can trigger these people's allergies, which pretty much means that what these people are claiming is literally impossible. In addition, every single study done so far has shown that when you tell these people that you turned off the source of EM they think is the cause of their problem, they get better. Even if you lie to them about it, and the thing is still on. Similarly, if you tell them that you turned a device on, they'll suddenly start getting their headaches, even though nothing was turned on.

      Now, if you tell me that in a population of billions, there are some humans that are sensitive to electromagnetic fields in such a way that makes them good at finding north...I'm willing to believe that and run some tests. Sounds plausible and interesting.

    2. Re:Logical treatment. by LateArthurDent · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Is it?

      Yes, it is.

      Suppose any people who were sensitive to the naturally occurring EMF were filtered out by evolution?

      What I tried to say in my post is that there's essentially no difference. That's like saying that some people might be allergic to showers, but not rain. Oooh, the rain drops are more organized when they come out of the shower head. It doesn't matter, it's still water.

      Again, I'm not defending these people because, like most of the readers here, I really doubt their claims... but it surely seems like it's at least possible that people can be affected by EMFs... not like turning a switch on and off, but overall mood.

      Maybe, but that's not what they're saying. They're saying they get affected by wifi and cell towers and nothing else. That's like the showerhead vs. rain example. It's stupidly insane.

  6. FFS RTF Links - Radio is not banned there by OzPeter · · Score: 4, Informative

    The first link in TFA is all about an additional approval process required for transmitters in the region so that they do not adversely affect the Radio Telescopes. The second link says basically the same thing.

    Come back Taco .. we miss you.

    --
    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
  7. Sadly I don't think it's just your imagination.... by arcite · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perhaps its precisely due to the internet that we have so many people acting on their neurotic tendencies. With 24/7 access to the 'net and the ability to look up any information desired, we can self-diagnose ourselves like never before. We're now so afraid of disease that we sterilize our homes (and ourselves) to such an extent that our own bodies immune system turns on us. We believe in conspiracy theories, listen to Internet bloggers, form social circles and 'friend' celebrity actors who promote ideologies based on nothing more than being critical of the status-quo (or for it). Critical through is thrown out the window in favor of demagoguery. Oh well, at least this set of self-diagnosed, technologically persecuted individuals can find peace among the dense Virginia forests, safe from harming wider society.

  8. Re:Doesn't need to be ionizing to have an effect by MoonBuggy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Totally impossible? No. That's why we have scientific tests and double-blind studies; until I see a paper published in a respected journal indicating a positive result (the case study alluded to by TFA is seriously short on details, and apparently disputed), however, I'm happy to write this off as a psychological issue.

  9. Re:Doesn't need to be ionizing to have an effect by Omnifarious · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can't find a reference, but I seem to remember my psychology class covering people that could get skin burns because they were touched with a piece of metal that they *thought* was hot, but really wasn't. If the mind can do that, it seems plausible it could cause other symptoms.

    Yes, the brain of someone convinced of a fallacy regarding their health is capable of making them feel all kinds of symptoms. But it wasn't the piece of metal that caused the skin burns.

    --
    Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
  10. Re:Sure, maybe these guys are crazy... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm pretty sure we have no idea what wifi, cellphones, etc. are doing to us.

    Yes we do. We've studied it do death. At the absolute worst it might cause a tiny, tiny bit of increase in certain cancers and / or cause some local radiative effects near the antenna. It probably doesn't cause anything above the noise floor of people dying from the Usual Suspects. In other words, if you're worried about that cell phone, put down the damned cigarette first. And buckle your seat belt.

     

    It's like how mercury was first treated... we all just think it's fine and laugh at anyone who says otherwise because we don't experience the problem or haven't seen it with our own eyes. But, we really have no idea.

    Actually, Mercury was readily identified as an industrial poison soon after it became widely used (Mad as a Hatter).

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  11. I used to be afraid of EM but not anymore by rjforster · · Score: 3, Funny

    Don't get me wrong, I'm terribly allergic to wifi, mobile phones, even a microwave oven being used next door but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter much. You see, I'm also allergic to neutrinos. Do you know how many of those things pass through my body every single second. Oh it causes me so much pain you just wouldn't believe. :-)