"Wi-Fi Refugees" Shelter in West Virginia Mountains

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.'"

Comments

Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy

[elrous0]

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.

Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy

[c6gunner]

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 ...

Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy

[MoonBuggy]

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.

Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy

[MightyMartian]

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

Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy

[TheRaven64]

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...

Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy

[thesh0ck]

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.

Re:Just what WVa needs, a new variety of crazy

[Grishnakh]

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.

It's contagious, all right

[Just Some Guy]

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.

Re:It's contagious, all right

[madhatter256]

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

Re:It's contagious, all right

[trout007]

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.

From Wikipedia...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:From Wikipedia...

[Jthon]

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.

Is it my imagination...

[jbarr]

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?

Logical treatment.

[UncHellMatt]

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

Re:Logical treatment.

[LateArthurDent]

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.

FFS RTF Links - Radio is not banned there

[OzPeter]

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.