Town has no cell service, so the 'electrosensitive' have made it home

There are two ways to be in bed with an ache: lying and turning. If you had an undiagnosable chronic illness with flareups, would you content yourself with your life being essentially over, or would you keep trying to alter your environment until other people thought you had a weird lifestyle? I think pretty much all of the ambitious professionals on this forum would be wrapping themselves in tin foil like a baked potato long before they gave up on being alert and active enough to self-actualize.<p>If you thought non-ionizing radiation only coupled to the human body thermally, it could instead be trying gluten-free, or notroopics, or buying a lot of air filters, and if your illness went into remission after starting you wouldn&#x27;t want to switch back and forth twenty times to build up a statistical sample.

It&#x27;s a crazy field. It&#x27;s quite obvious that *most* of the effects are purely psychosomatic. The effects are related to appearances rather than reality--for example, there is a small correlation between visible high tension power lines and health. But not to the actual EMF strength. Same thing you see elsewhere--people with health issues moving to undesirable but not bad housing because that&#x27;s what they can afford.<p>I&#x27;ve also been in multiple online discussions where various people were sensitive to sounds that most people don&#x27;t hear--typically devices that messed with magnetic fields at frequencies in the ultrasonic range. (Say, many switching power supplies.) Something a little bit loose wiggles in the field and you get an ultrasonic whine. None have struck me as kooks--but consider what happens when someone doesn&#x27;t pay enough attention to detail. Is it the Wi-Fi radiation or it&#x27;s power supply? Plenty of people fall for the obvious item in figuring out food reactions, I would expect to see some in other areas.<p>And what if there actually is something of a basis? We have plenty of examples of inadvertent AM radios, including from dental fillings. Clearly, it&#x27;s possible to receive radio energy in freaky ways--the AM radio is the obvious case because it carries a signal whose reception manifests in a detectable way. What if the &quot;electrosensitives&quot; are actually people who have some natural resonance in the brain with some common transmitter? It wouldn&#x27;t take a lot of energy to generate spurious brain activity. Mistaken generalization certainly seems within the realm of possibility.<p>Note that I&#x27;m *not* suggesting any direct harm here, just interference.

I&#x27;m pretty proud of the fact that I&#x27;ve never been through an airport scanner. People treat me crazy for it and I probably am. &quot;It is perfectly safe, you get more radiation from the plane ride.&quot;<p>My issue is that I do not trust the operators of the machine. I do not trust the safety protocols in place. We constantly tool on the TSA and its security theater filled with incompetent people. So, why do we trust them to operate these machines? What if it malfunctions or isn&#x27;t properly serviced?<p>I was just at an airport, watched someone move a bit, and have to get immediately rescanned again. 2x the radiation, 2x the chances something goes wrong. The odds are against you.<p>Why are we so complacent in their usage? The only way around this is to suffer humiliation. An invasive pat down where they make you wait an inordinate amount of time for someone to come along, slowly put on gloves, explain to you the same set of rules you&#x27;ve heard a million times, and then literally touch your entire body, including brushing up against your genitals. I have actually noticed some guards enjoying it more than others.<p>In the end, I feel it is worth the 10 minutes of inconvenience and the humiliation (which I&#x27;m pretty immune to at this point in my life). I get to the airport early anyway.<p>Somehow the people in the article have gotten it into their heads that the only solution to their issues are to move into the middle of nowhere. That said, I can understand their situation too and feel empathy for them.

I&#x27;ve been reading about folks moving to the Radio Quiet Zone for a long time. I had some fear that the number of e-refugees (for lack of a better term) would grow to a counterproductive level. Thankfully, the article numbers them in the dozens.<p>If they have more relief in their life + aren&#x27;t a burden to others, what better outcome could I hope for?<p>disclosure: married to a chemical hypersensitive for 25y, who fortunately found some peace elsewhere

It reminds me of Todd Haynes _Safe_ [1] where it&#x27;s never clear what&#x27;s wrong exactly with the main character, but there&#x27;s no doubt she has a plenty of toxic social relationships.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Safe_(1995_film)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Safe_(1995_film)</a>

Gift link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wapo.st&#x2F;4eLUEmn" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wapo.st&#x2F;4eLUEmn</a>

If someone identifies as electrosensitive, and moving to a low-EM zone helps relieve their symptoms, it seems more likely we have something to learn about the nature of psychosomatic illnesses than something to learn about radiation physics.

Ah man, don&#x27;t go in there with a shortwave receiver and scan through the dozens&#x2F;hundreds of stations you&#x27;ll pick up anywhere in North America (or really anywhere in the world)... :\

I&#x27;ve seen countless articles like this one, and what irks me most about them is the almost exclusive focus by their authors on these people and their ailments. It&#x27;s like the long-time residents of these tiny communities--and the effects the influx of these people are having on them--are an afterthought not worth considering.

I don’t know what to make of people in this situation. Some claim it’s obviously psychosomatic. Possibly, but humans are actively evolving genetically and is it possible that some small group is sensitive via an undiscovered genetic quirk? I’m super curious about this.

Previous discussion (11 comments): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41881527">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41881527</a>

If enough of these crazies move to Greenbank it will at least help keep the area a radio quiet zone, so good for the observatory!

There are many things that can not be explained. I am glad that they have found relief.

I&#x27;ll just leave this here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QCK26X-U678" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QCK26X-U678</a><p>NRQZ used for testing 5G above legal limits and I guess none of the electosensitive noticed.

I have not read article, because it&#x27;s paywalled, but I was very sad reading the previous comments. Over the last few hundreds of years, the humanity has changed so much in the environment. Implications of things were not fully understood at the time they were introduced. I&#x27;m not saying whether these people are right or wrong, but calling them crazy is not really serving anything. Just imagine how people would look at you of you claimed you have serious health problems because of this wonderful new material called asbestos.