Review of THE QUIET ZONE
The story of Green Bank, West Virginia
In our hyperconnected world, we often seek out places of solitude. Places without cell service, or wifi. I seek them out myself through camping and hiking in the mountains. I often dream of a simple life in the middle of nowhere where substacks and twitter don’t exist. But do these places even exist in the modern world? And if they do, are they everything we dream of?
In a random bookstore discovery, I found The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence, by Stephen Kurczy. The “quiet zone” is a place called Green Bank, West Virginia, home to the Green Bank Observatory, one of the largest radio telescopes on earth. And this 60+ year history of this observatory has shaped the town.
The observatory, when built, necessitated that the area around it, and specifically in the 10 square miles around it, were a “radio quiet zone.” This meant nothing that created radio waves. Over time this has meant no microwaves, wifi, cell towers, automatic sensors – nothing. The town has stirred consistent interest from the media. What is this town suspended in a different technological era?
In some ways the narrative is correct – the town is not hyperconnected like many cities in America, but it is pretty typical of very small, rural towns. Yet, when Kurczy went to investigate the town, he started unraveling deeper mysteries than what the standard media narrative had previously suggested. It is true that for a long time, the town fit the ultra-rural stereotype: schools had no technology, people used the general store as a meeting post and communication hub, and of course, everyone knew everyone.
But over the years the town has become less quiet. Because there is no real enforcement of the radio silence, the town slowly started to become connected. And by the 2010s nearly every home and business had wifi. Many people had cellphones after cellular providers began putting up towers in nearby areas.
The town also has some other stories that were worth uncovering. Because of its reputation as a radio quiet zone, “electrosensitives” – people who claim to suffer illness as a result of radio waves passing through them – have been moving into the place in droves (for a small town). And, due to reasons seemingly unrelated to the telescope, Green Bank has been home to a neo-Nazi group The National Alliance for decades – though its headquarters has recently moved to Tennessee.
This was an interesting enough book. Certainly, a nice palette cleanser in between reading a lot of science books. It was also written well and was highly engaging. But I am not quite sure what the point of the book was, aside from him sharing his experiences during his time in the town over several years. Which, perhaps, maybe that was the whole point.
Published: August 2021
Publisher: Dey Street Books
Format: Hardcover
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America by Leila Philip (2022). READ MY REVIEW
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan (2017). READ MY REVIEW
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