Welcome to the Quiet Zone

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Welcome to the Quiet Zone: We Are Technological Lepers

We Are Technological Lepers

BBC Radio 4 - Welcome to the Quiet Zone, We Are Technological Lepers

If you thought your Wi-Fi was slowly killing you, would you move to the Quiet Zone?

Emile Holba meets the electromagnetic hypersensitive escapees, who have come to live in the Quiet Zone to get away from illnesses they believe are caused by electromagnetic fields.

Pocohontas County has strict rules about the emission of radio signals, so that the Green Bank Telescope can conduct observations without interference. 
This can cause some irritation to locals, who might want to use mobile phones but can't, but the National Quiet Zone is a legally controlled are of radio quiet, so the area has remained Wi-Fi free, as the rest of the world get increasingly addicted to their smart phones. 
Now a new group of people have started to make their way into the area - living in cabins, or 'faraday cages', they are the people who believe themselves to be electromagnetically hyper sensitive. Mobile phone towers can give them headaches; smart metres stop them sleeping. Emile Holba heads into the woods to meet the Wi-Fi runaways, and self-describing 'technological lepers'. 

Producer: Sara Jane Hall.

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Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Emile Holba explores the National Quiet Zone, 13,000 square miles of radio silence.

Photographer Emile Holba explores the National Quiet Zone, 13,000 square miles of radio silence, just a few hundred miles from Washington DC

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