West Virginia Town of Green Bank Has Become a Refuge For Electrosensitive People (washingtonpost.com) 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Brandon Barrett arrived here two weeks ago, sick but hopeful, like dozens before him. Just a few years back, he could dead lift 660 pounds. After an injury while training to be a professional dirt-bike rider, he opened a motorcycle shop just north of Buffalo. When he wasn't working, he would cleanse his mind through rigorous meditation. In 2019, he began getting sick. And then sicker. Brain fog. Memory issues. Difficulty focusing. Depression. Anxiety. Fatigue. Brandon was pretty sure he knew why: the cell tower a quarter-mile behind his shop and all the electromagnetic radiation it produces, that cellphones produce, that WiFi routers produce, that Bluetooth produces, that the whole damn world produces. He thought about the invisible waves that zip through our airspace -- maybe they pollute our bodies, somehow? [...]
Then Brandon read about Green Bank, an unincorporated speck on the West Virginia map, hidden in the Allegheny Mountains, about a four-hour drive southwest of D.C. There are no cell towers there, by design. He read that other sick people had moved here and gotten better, that the area's electromagnetic quietude is protected by the federal government. Perhaps it could protect Brandon. It's quiet here so that scientists can listen to corners of the universe, billions of light-years away. In the 1950s, the federal government snatched up farmland to build the Green Bank Observatory. It's now home to the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope, the largest steerable telescope in the world at 7,600 metric tons and a height of 485 feet. Its 2.3-acre dish can study quasars and pulsars, map asteroids and planets, and search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
The observatory's machines are so sensitive that terrestrial radio waves would interfere with their astronomical exploration, like a shout (a bunch of WiFi signals) drowning out a whisper (signals from the clouds of hydrogen hanging out between galaxies). So in 1958, the Federal Communications Commission created the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area encompassing wedges of both Virginia and West Virginia, where radio transmissions are restricted to varying degrees. At its center is a 10-mile zone around the observatory where WiFi, cellphones and cordless phones -- among many other types of wave-emitting equipment -- are outlawed. Wired internet is okay, as are televisions -- though you must have a cable or satellite provider. It's not a place out of 100 years ago. More like 30. If you want to make plans to meet someone, you make them in person. Some people move here to work at the observatory. Others come because they feel like they have to. These are the 'electrosensitives,' as they often refer to themselves. They are ill, and Green Bank is their Lourdes. The electrosensitives guess that they number at least 75 in Pocahontas County, which has a population of roughly 7,500. Literary Hub, the BBC, Slate, and the Washingtonian have non-paywalled articles about Green Bank and the "wi-fi refugees" that shelter there.
Then Brandon read about Green Bank, an unincorporated speck on the West Virginia map, hidden in the Allegheny Mountains, about a four-hour drive southwest of D.C. There are no cell towers there, by design. He read that other sick people had moved here and gotten better, that the area's electromagnetic quietude is protected by the federal government. Perhaps it could protect Brandon. It's quiet here so that scientists can listen to corners of the universe, billions of light-years away. In the 1950s, the federal government snatched up farmland to build the Green Bank Observatory. It's now home to the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope, the largest steerable telescope in the world at 7,600 metric tons and a height of 485 feet. Its 2.3-acre dish can study quasars and pulsars, map asteroids and planets, and search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.
The observatory's machines are so sensitive that terrestrial radio waves would interfere with their astronomical exploration, like a shout (a bunch of WiFi signals) drowning out a whisper (signals from the clouds of hydrogen hanging out between galaxies). So in 1958, the Federal Communications Commission created the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area encompassing wedges of both Virginia and West Virginia, where radio transmissions are restricted to varying degrees. At its center is a 10-mile zone around the observatory where WiFi, cellphones and cordless phones -- among many other types of wave-emitting equipment -- are outlawed. Wired internet is okay, as are televisions -- though you must have a cable or satellite provider. It's not a place out of 100 years ago. More like 30. If you want to make plans to meet someone, you make them in person. Some people move here to work at the observatory. Others come because they feel like they have to. These are the 'electrosensitives,' as they often refer to themselves. They are ill, and Green Bank is their Lourdes. The electrosensitives guess that they number at least 75 in Pocahontas County, which has a population of roughly 7,500. Literary Hub, the BBC, Slate, and the Washingtonian have non-paywalled articles about Green Bank and the "wi-fi refugees" that shelter there.
This is a delusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
They're not hurting anyone.
Leave them alone.
Re:This is a delusion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is a delusion (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, if they leave everyone else alone its perfectly fine.
But also I've noticed that groups of people with weird ideas often like to make other people conform to their delusional rules. So I'm more worried about their views spreading across the country and affecting mhttps://mobile.slashdot.org/story/24/10/18/2342223/west-virginia-town-of-green-bank-has-become-a-refuge-for-electrosensitive-people#y life.
Re: (Score:2)
Also crazy people will sometimes do (Score:2)
We just had a major issue down south with violent mobs chasing FEMA aid workers out of their communities because they thought they were going to steal their precious bodily fluids or something.
We have hostile foreign powers actively encouraging our craziest of crazies to do crazy things. Hell we have some hostile domestic powers doing that. This has been a known risk for a long time, long enough to have a name: stochastic terrorism
Re: (Score:2)
Violent mobs? It was like one guy:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]
Re: (Score:2)
They're not hurting anyone.
Leave them alone.
They're hurting themselves.
By choosing to live there, they're intentionally directly exposing themselves to extragalactic radio emissions, without the helpful masking provided terrestrial radio sources. Don't they realize that a neutron star is 40 orders of magnitude more powerful than a CB radio? I would never want to be directly exposed to that without the help of a cellphone tower to deflect it.
It's no coincidence that human life expectancy has greatly increased over the last 100 years, largely thanks to
Re: (Score:1)
They're not hurting anyone. Leave them alone.
You're kidding right? They're fucking lunatics with mental problems. They should be kept in the republican party where they belong.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: This is a delusion (Score:2)
On the other hand...putting the crunchy granola weirdo magnet out in the hills of West Virginia isn't the worst place for such an arrangement.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter if it's all in their heads. As long as they move there on their own and we don't have to foot the bill, who does it hurt?
Re:This is a delusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
None of these people survive any of the blind testing which has been conducted numerous times.
They do seem a bit out there, but killing them is a bit extreme!
Re: This is a delusion (Score:2)
I believe it. I remember having all the power go out, and having a totally different feeling, like a buzz in my mind has gone off. I also sleep better with my phone in airplane mode. There are many stories of people picking up radio frequency through fillings or shrapnel, and existing military tech uses the same vibrations induced in jawbone from teeth for communication.
https://www.defenseone.com/tec... [defenseone.com]
It may be a matter of foreign metal in body in most cases, but I bet it happens.
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Still I'd rather they all gather in one place and stop messing with others and forcing their delusions on them.
I went out there about 10 years ago (Score:2)
The observatory gift shop sold one time use film cameras. No idea if even 10 years ago you could get them developed. God only knows what the deal would be now.
Re: (Score:2)
You can still get them developed at a drugstore or specialty camera shop, just it takes a few weeks and it's like $25+.
Reminds me of someone I know (Score:3)
One day I was at their house and I surreptitiously removed the batteries from the TV remote. Then I said "hey look here!", pointed the battery-less remote at their face, and very obviously pushed one of the buttons. They shut their eyes hard and gasped in pain; "are you TRYING to blind me, that HURT!" they said. Then I took the batteries out of my pocket and showed them to to them, then removed the battery door from the remote and showed it had no batteries.
They said "..well, it must have a residual charge or something. Don't ever do that to me again!"
Unless someone has scientific proof this 'EM sensitivity' thing is more than just a delusion or phobia, I remain as skeptical of it as I do of my friend and their alleged ability to see infrared light.
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The most likely illness will be psychological stress induced effects. That's why there is no particular cause they can pin down and also why getting away from the stressful environment reduces the effects.
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On the other hand these "Electrosensitive People" are making claims involving minuscule power levels, which is not credible.
Not this shit again (Score:2)
They've done test after test after test and they've NEVER found a single person that could actually be shown to sense an electromagnetic field. Never, not once over hundreds of tests.
This stupid story pops up every year or so, blah blah blah, and never once has anyone, anywhere ever been able to show that they're 'sensitive' to or affected in any way by electromagnetic or electrostatic fields.
Wouldn't a faraday cage work too? (Score:2)
Doesn't seem that hard to line walls with metal mesh, then ground it.
Wonder if people would be willing to book rentals at a place designed to help them test the theory empirically. Meaning record how they feel, and periodically block or don't the EM waves. See if any correlation happens.
Even if this all turns out to be placebo... How can we use this pattern/data to harness a benign placebo to use instead of 'run away and avoid many modern things'? Can the modern propensity for manipulation be harnessed
Radio Frequencies are REAL!!! (Score:1)
But RFI affecting people's health has been debunked so many times.
If you don't believe in the scientific process, and your personal anecdote (backed up by nothing other than subjective feelz) is all you have... you have the right to your opinions, and you can move to nowhere West VIrginia.
No need to "publish" your "manifesto" or claim that you could bench press 600lbs but then cellular phones and towers and you became a krytponite-struck Clark Kent and fortunately moving to Nowhere, West Virginia fixed all
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But RFI affecting people's health has been debunked so many times.
I think I remember a story from some years back about a town where lot of people were complaining about a cell tower's adverse effects, so someone looked in to it and found that the tower had been shut down for years.