The battle for quiet extends beyond Green Bank to the sites of nearly 1,000 publicly funded radio astronomy observatories located around the world, in places like Chile’s Atacama Desert and the Australian outback. The newest threat to the sensitive equipment, which enables not just astronomical research but also planetary defence and high-precision geolocation services, comes from satellites. By the end of 2023, more than 5,000 satellites orbited Earth, with plans for hundreds of thousands more. Today, 99.5% of the NRQZ is within range of high-speed satellite internet service. “Satellite constellations are impacting observatories everywhere,” says Malusky. “If the wrong frequencies hit the wrong thing, it can fry the equipment.”

Then there’s the concern that the ability to access the internet everywhere—even in the quietest town in America—is also frying our brains. Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling 2024 book, The Anxious Generation, captured a widespread conviction that smartphones and social media contribute to adolescent anxiety and depression, as states from Florida to California begin to pass laws restricting cell phone use in public schools.

Today, more Green Bankers are seeing value in quiet. While the county’s population has been on a steady decline, the Quiet Zone has seen an influx of two groups: “electrosensitives,” who believe they’re harmed by exposure to Wi-Fi and other electronics, and the Amish, who abstain from most technology and have started farms in the area.

“At one point everyone was all hot and bothered about the fact they couldn’t use their cell phone,” says Robert Sheets, a lifelong resident whose home is in the shadow of the Green Bank Telescope. “I think that has been mitigated quite a bit as people realize that maybe not being connected 24/7 is OK.”

This ability to get away has become the area’s main tourism draw. A retired English teacher, Sheets is now chair of the Pocahontas County Convention & Visitors Bureau. “The biggest reason people come to Pocahontas County is to take a walk in the woods,” he says.

With one of the lowest population densities and largest national forests east of the Mississippi, the area is naturally conducive to both astronomy and outdoor activity. Every June, Green Bank hosts a multi-day “star party” campout, and similar events also happen nearby at Watoga State Park, which is an official Dark Sky Park. There’s the 311-mile Alleghany Trail, the 77-mile Greenbrier River Trail, and the 100-kilometer West Virginia Trail Festival race, which crosses the observatory’s property and finishes atop Snowshoe Mountain Resort, considered to have the best downhill skiing south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Snowshoe sees about a half-million skiers annually and also hosts the Mountain Bike World Cup. The observatory draws another 50,000 visitors a year and offers guided tours, including of the telescope that legendary astronomer Frank Drake used in 1960 to conduct the first formal search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Accommodations range from luxury homes at Snowshoe to rustic experiences like staying atop the 65-foot-high Thorny Mountain Fire Tower in Seneca State Forest. For a bit more opulence, yet still within the wider boundary of the NRQZ, there’s The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs.

If you visit, be prepared for limited cell service. Save for at Snowshoe and a few roadside “phone booths” where locals know to pull off for a bar of renegade cell service, you’ll likely be disconnected. But don’t let that intimidate you—embrace the opportunity to talk to strangers. There’s still a neighbors-helping-neighbors attitude here that has all but disappeared in digitally connected areas where help is an app away. Sheets recount a story about a friend whose motorcycle broke down on the Capital Beltway, leaving him stranded for six hours. When he broke down near Green Bank, he was rescued within five minutes. “I’ve gotten stories like that from all sorts of people who have moved here,” he tells me.

Whereas cell service allows people to communicate from apart, so-called dead zones force people to come together. According to Malusky, “when you’re in the middle of nowhere and there’s no one around—there’s a sense of watching out for each other.”