It was a decision initially based on frugality, then fueled by stubbornness. The day I left Cambodia, I dropped my phone in a garbage can.īack in the United States, I put off getting a replacement. I was as dependent on my phone as a baby on a pacifier. I heard phantom rings and felt phantom vibrations. Desperate for a callback from a source, I would stare at the device, willing it to comply. I had been working for the Cambodia Daily, a scrappy rag in Phnom Penh, and my cell phone had come to feel like an extension of myself. My own journey to the Quiet Zone had begun in 2009, when I got rid of my first and last mobile device, a silver Samsung flip phone. Many were convinced they had nowhere to go but the Quiet Zone. (At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, some people similarly claimed that cell towers and 5G cell service were somehow linked to the outbreak, particularly in cities.) In essence, they were allergic to modern life.
#Define radio silence serial#
The area had also attracted a sex cult, a racist serial killer, and, most recently, people with a mysterious illness called electromagnetic hypersensitivity who described feeling ill when exposed to iPhones and smart meters, refrigerators and microwaves. Subscribe to WIRED and stay smart with more of your favorite Ideas writers.
Niday adjusted the dials on a computer to look for signals in the 2.4 gigahertz frequency: Wi-Fi.
Wiring snaked from the roof down to a stack of electronics and computer monitors in the cab. Theoretically, you couldn’t turn on a smartphone in town without alerting Niday. Further safeguarding the observatory was a surrounding 13,000-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone-an area larger than the combined landmass of Connecticut and Massachusetts-which limited cell service and all kinds of wireless communications systems. Operating electrical equipment within 10 miles of here was illegal if it disrupted the telescopes, punishable by a state fine of $50 per day. Niday was heading out on patrol of Green Bank, West Virginia, to keep tabs on radio noise that might interfere with the half-dozen giant, dish-shaped telescopes looming behind us at the nation’s oldest federal radio astronomy observatory. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission.
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