6:00 a.m., October 20, 2021
For more than 60 years, Green Bank, a town in West Virginia, has housed an observatory that needs radio silence to be able to observe stars and black holes. The American government therefore created a “calm zone” in 1958, to protect its activities and also those of a site of the NSA, the American intelligence agency. Consequence: the city, located four hours from Washington, has no telephone network or 4G. Radio waves are limited and supervised over an area of almost 34,000 km², and wifi routers are not recommended.
It thus attracts the tired of everything connected. The tourist office has taken advantage of this and is promoting the region as a kingdom of “ultimate digital detox”. “In a world where you can’t go more than a minute without hearing an electronic device beeping, this is the perfect place to escape it all,” said Chelsea Ruby, Virginia Secretary of Tourism. Western, quoted by AFP.
The village is changing
An attractive promise, at a time when 85% of American adults say they have a smartphone and that nearly a third find to be “almost all the time” online, according to a survey by the Pew Research institute. “It clears things up,” confirms Yvonne, 59, owner of a souvenir shop at Green Bank. Nancy Showalter, a tourist who came to visit the observatory, was surprised that suddenly she had no network anymore, but she quickly began to appreciate the silence. “You look around, you listen to others. It’s wonderful. More people should do it,” enthuses the 78-year-old retiree.
But despite its strange rules and isolation amidst hills and forests, the village of less than 200 souls is changing. According to locals, wireless internet has spread there in recent years and officials haven’t even had to pay the planned $ 50 fine. Along with the construction of hotels and restaurants, house prices in Pocahontas County, where Green Bank is located, have risen almost three times faster than the national average over the past decade, according to some estimates.
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