Every week, Chuck Niday makes the rounds in Pocahontas County in search of rogue radio frequencies.
This 13,000-square-mile area in West Virginia is home to Green Bank Observatory — and known for being “the quietest town in America.”
The observatory boasts the largest steerable radio telescopes in the world, used to measure invisible energy waves raining down on Earth, but in order to do its job, it requires complete electromagnetic silence.
Since it opened in 1958, the observatory has discovered black holes, radiation belts and gravitational waves. Sitting in a valley, the surrounding mountains offer a natural barrier against the outside world’s noise. But cutting off outside noise isn’t enough.
When it first was built, the federal government also established the surrounding county as a National Radio Quiet Zone — where “cellphone signals, Wi-Fi, and other electronic noise are tightly monitored and restricted,” writes journalist Stephen Kurczy in his new book, “The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence” (Dey Street Books), out August 3.
Niday, an engineer for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, has been on the front lines for protecting this radio-quiet environment since 2011. “Hypothetically, you couldn’t turn on a smartphone in town without him knowing,” Kurczy writes.
In his Dodge Ram 2500, Niday drives around the observatory and its location in the town of Green Bank (estimated population: 180), “searching for ghosts: the invisible waves of electromagnetic radiation that are all around us,” Kurczy writes.
Green Bank and the surrounding towns — the total population in the area is around 8,000 people — may seem idyllic. But it’s also definitely strange.
Because of the lack of cellphones, locals find creative ways to communicate with each other. Trents General Store in Arbovale, about a half mile from the observatory, has two conveyor belts covered in sticky notes from shoppers who leave messages there for friends or family.
The Quiet Zone has also attracted people who aren’t just looking for the simple life. Over the last few decades, there’s been an influx in doomsday preppers and Neo-Nazis, who’ve come to escape the attention (and perceived dangers) of an increasingly digital, electrified world.
Nobody takes much notice of the Neo-Nazis, even local law enforcement. “You can’t legislate it, you can’t change it, so you just learn to suck it up and live with it,” said former county sheriff David Jonese. He once arrested one of the members on assault charges, but found him to be “a very cordial guy.”
It’s also become a refuge for so-called “electrosensitives,” convinced that iPhones, refrigerators and microwaves are making them physically ill, despite no medical evidence that such a condition exists.
‘We’re just trying to keep everything down to a low roar.’
Chuck Niday
Regardless of why they came, they all feel “allergic to modern life,” writes Kurczy. “And many felt they had nowhere to go but Green Bank.”
For almost a quarter century, the Quiet Zone rules were enforced by Wesley Sizemore, a native West Virginian who wasn’t afraid to knock on doors and tell people to unplug their microwaves or turn off their Wi-Fi routers.
Sizemore was so good at his job, he once tracked down the source of RFI (radio frequency interference) to a malfunctioning electric blanket. He confiscated the law-breaking blanket and the observatory paid for a replacement. Many locals enjoyed a visit from Sizemore, who also became a sort of free repairman, happy to fix a damaged electric fence or buzzing stereo radio.
But Sizemore also had a few irate offenders who grabbed him by the collar and demanded he get off their property. A schoolteacher once claimed Sizemore threatened to take away his wireless speakers and barked at him, “We can make you get rid of your stuff, it’s the law!”
For Sizemore, who retired in 2011, the job as Quiet Zone enforcer wasn’t just a steady gig. He believed he was helping astronomers make contact with extraterrestrial life.
“What frequency is E.T. going to call on?” Sizemore asks in the book. “Don’t you need a place where you can access as many of those frequencies as possible?”
Conspiracy theories run rampant among the locals. Some believe the telescopes are used as a front for CIA operations or a cover for missile silos. Others think the observatory could create thunderstorms on command, or suck radio waves out of the atmosphere.
“The observatory once got a call from a mother asking why her television was flashing a message that read ‘NRAO,’ which she presumed was a signal from the telescope,” writes Kurczy. “Someone had to break it to her that the acronym stood for ‘Not Rated — Adults Only,’ which had appeared because her son was trying to watch porn.”
Diane Schou is one of the electrosensitives who have flocked to the area, responsible for about two hundred home sales in the county. She moved to Green Bank in 2007 after years of suffering from electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). Before relocating to West Virginia, she lived on a remote farm in Iowa and slept inside a homemade box covered in wire mesh that helped block out electromagnetic radiation.
Schou didn’t just feel that her life was in peril because of cell towers, smartphones, and even certain lights. She also claimed to have “the mysterious power to ‘detect’ Wi-Fi, cell signals, and other forms of electromagnetic radiation,” writes Kurczy. When she gets a splitting headache, she “can’t tell you whether it’s a cell tower or a cellphone, or an iPad, or a computer,” but she says she can feel that electromagnetic radiation is lurking nearby.
Other new arrivals to the Quiet Zone include David Warner, who’s been stockpiling gold, shotguns, a solar-powered generator, gas masks and 20 gallons of gasoline in a nearby cave. Warner believes mass power outages are inevitable and will one day transform the planet into a global Quiet Zone — and he wants to be ready when that happens.
‘All of these subcultures came here for a reason. To be left alone.’
Pocahontas County Sheriff Jerry Dale about “electrosensitives”
“He saw no need to own a cellphone,” writes Kurczy. “But he was looking into buying a radiation suit.”
Since 1978, Pocahontas County has also been home to the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization that owns a 346-acre mountainside militia base. “The quiet is an asset to the neo-Nazis,” writes Kurczy. “A blanket for their ideology to hide under.”
Within the same community, there’s a hippie commune called the Zendik Farm, which is plotting to overthrow America’s consumerist “Deathculture,” a retired biologist from Maryland who opened a farm for rehabilitating bears, and the Gesundheit! Institute, an alternative medicine hospital founded by clown physician Patch Adams.
As Pocahontas County Sheriff Jerry Dale explains: “All of these subcultures came here for a reason. To be left alone.”
Before his retirement, Sizemore proposed an even more aggressive enforcement of the ban on wireless tech, arguing for the prosecution of residents who tried installing Wi-Fi devices. But the National Radio Astronomy Observatory headquarters nixed the idea, opting instead to keep peace in the community. Operating any electrical equipment within ten miles of the observatory is supposedly punishable with a state fine of $50 — but has never been enforced.
“In the Quiet Zone’s six-decade history,” writes Kurczy, “the observatory had never asked the county prosecutor to fine rule-breakers.”
And that friendly worldview extends throughout the entire community.
If a car breaks down on the mountain during a thunderstorm, at least a half dozen people will run out to help the driver. Numerous locals use HAM radios to monitor law enforcement, sometimes personally responding to accidents before the police. Necessity has bred kindness.
“Without the ability to call for help on a cellphone, one had to trust in the help of strangers,” writes Kurczy.
And with a lack of screens to stare at, people were actually forced to have conversations with each other. Walk into any eating establishment in the county, and you’ll see people making eye contact, listening intently to each other. The sheriff’s office in Marlinton, a town 25 miles from the observatory, even had to post a “No Talking to Inmates” sign to discourage pedestrians from chatting with prisoners through the iron bars.
And yet, despite all this, the Quiet Zone harbors a dirty little secret: It might not be so quiet after all.
When Niday took Kurczy for a ride-along in his truck, “we counted more than two hundred Wi-Fi signals,” the author writes, “some coming from the homes of staff living on the observatory’s own property — a blatant violation of the facility’s regulations.”
With fines and prosecutions out of the question, “we’re just trying to keep everything down to a low roar,” Niday said.
Even Schou, who claims electromagnetic radiation could kill her, isn’t as tech-free as she claims. She and her friends regularly visit the Green Bank Public Library for the computers and free Internet, insisting that the overhead lights, which give off electromagnetic radiation, are turned off.
“They could apparently get by in darkness,” Kurczy writes, “but not without Internet.”
