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$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone
- sanj 10y ago"An array of giant parabolic dishes obscured by thick forest cover are housed on a mountain ridge just over a mile southeast of the main property. These, however, are not part of the sale."
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThat's one hell of a caveat!
- maxerickson 10y agoWhat do you mean? A mile south would mean there are roughly 640 acres between the land being disposed of and the array. It doesn't seem to really be part of the area being sold, just a nearby property. It's like saying that such and such skyscraper doesn't come with a house located some distance away.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoThat's a good point, I didn't properly imagine the scale.
- adeel4 10y agoThey can keep the dishes. Can you imagine how much it costs to dismantle them?
- jonknee 10y agoProbably not that much? A scrap company would probably do it for free.
- markps 10y agoWhen I was about 15, my dad and I volunteered to help strip cable and waveguide off giant dishes in a decommissioned radio-free zone north of Boulder. The material was donated to a local amateur radio club and was mostly recycled as scrap metal. I was given some wrenches, a harness, a few carabiners and some rope. I have to say, hanging off those bottom supports with nothing below me was one of the most exciting times of my life!
- walrus01 10y agoThe dishes have considerable value if dismantled carefully and relocated for a current C, Ku and Ka band teleport operator (two way satellite services). Will likely need new feeds and all electronics. A new 16.4 meter C-band earth station dish is $165,000+.
- edsouza 10y agoThat is the Sugar Grove NSA Listening Station. This is mentioned in the article. Also google satellite images shows it pretty clear if you search for it. It's south of Sugar Grove.
- pmorici 10y agoIt sounds like it is smack in the middle of a large area where Broadcast TV, WiFi, and cellphones aren't allowed. Given the prevalence of those things in everyday life you wonder how that effects the properties value regardless of the location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Quiet_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q...
- consto 10y agoBroadcast TV can be replaced with cable, WiFi can be (mostly) replaced with a good ethernet network in the home - it would have to be properly wired and I doubt powerline would cut it. However no cell phones. I'm guessing landlines and VoIP are popular.
- aab0 10y agoKids would go berserk in a setting like that, can you imagine? No Instagram, Snapchat, games, and on and on. Can smartphones even be plugged directly into an Ethernet socket? They only have USB ports AFAIK. Any parent with kids >10yo who moves there with them will soon wish they had torn down the house and built a Faraday cage they can put Wifi into instead...
- cfallin 10y ago> Can smartphones even be plugged directly into an Ethernet socket? Yup. I've done this with my Nexus 5. You need a USB OTG cable and a USB Ethernet adapter. Dorkiest thing ever, walking around the apartment trailing an Ethernet cable, but page-loads were pretty snappy, all right...
- aab0 10y agoNeat. I should've guessed that there would be a USB adapter. Is it plug-and-play or does it require additional drivers?
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- steve19 10y agoNo WiFi or microwave ovens allowed, and I would guess no cell phones. Good luck finding someone wanting to relocate their national headquarters... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Quiet_Zone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio...
- nickpsecurity 10y agoMaybe a chef with a cooking show?
- pyromine 10y agoA cooking shoe would 100% somehow manage to break an RF ban
- nickpsecurity 10y agoProbably haha. I could design one which couldn't, though, as people have been cooking since before cellphones, WiFi, and microwaves. There were five-star restaurants before these. Even feedback from customers could happen over landline. So, it's at least conceivable.
- percept 10y agohttp://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Globex_Corporation http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Globex_Corporation
- minikites 10y agoThere's also a lot of kooks who live there to get away from their "electromagnetic hypersensitivity" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-14887428 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-14887428 > Ms Schou is one of an estimated 5% of Americans who believe they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), which they say is caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields typically created by mobile phones, wi-fi and other electronic equipment. Similar to Snowflake, AZ: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/snowflake/ http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/snowflake/ > Some people with MCS also experience sensitivity to electricity, so some houses forgo electricity, or have it routed through a single room which can be completely shut off from the rest of the house.
- maxerickson 10y agoIt'd be worse to have the radio quiet zone and not let them live there.
- dmd 10y agoNumber of these people, when actually tested in a double-blind study, who have been shown to have any sensitivity or even awareness of the presence or absence of electromagnetic fields: 0
- walrus01 10y agothe placebo (and nocebo) effect is a hell of a thing
- profmonocle 10y agoMy favorite (probably apocryphal) anecdote about EM sensitivity: A mobile company built a new cell tower in a small town. Residents began complaining of headaches and nausea. A town meeting was called, and after hearing the complaints, a representative of the mobile company said "if it's that bad now, imagine how bad it'll be when we turn it on."
- daveguy 10y agoEstimated 5% of Americans? I know BBC is pretty reputable, but that seems like a very high estimate. Estimated by who?
- amelius 10y agoOr you could consider living amidst the Amish; it's a lot cheaper.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Shivetya 10y agowell oddly that isn't as true as some might believe. there is this whole ownership versus usage game that some of them play to let them "use" computers as long as they don't own them or the place where they are kept. plus like many faiths, it depends on which exact subset you are
- nxzero 10y ago122 acres for $1M plus $5M a year does not sound like a deal, especially given the RF ban.
- maxerickson 10y agoThat's why it's so cheap. Just building 80 homes could easily be $8 million dollars.
- nxzero 10y agoAside from the NSA, who would have a need to have 80 (likely very old) homes on a 122 acres on the middle of nowhere with an RF ban. Homes make the property worth less, not more. Demolition costs alone would likely be in the millions and quick search of comparable land prices in the area shows this is over priced.
- maxerickson 10y agoThat's what the GSA is tasked with figuring out. The higher price than the surroundings makes it obvious that they are hoping the facilities make the property worth more to the buyer.
- Thriptic 10y agoA cult / survivalist group?
- Someone 10y agoThe people with "Electromagnetic hypersensitivity" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_questionable_diseases https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_questionable_disease...) living next door? http://theweek.com/articles/481731/west-virginias-colony-wifi-refugees http://theweek.com/articles/481731/west-virginias-colony-wif...: The village of Green Bank — population 143 — has become a mecca for people who believe their lives have been disrupted by EHS. Until she moved to Green Bank, Diane Schou lived in a shielded metal cage to try and alleviate her EHS symptoms. "Living here allows me to be more of a normal person," says Schou, as quoted by BBC News. "I can be outdoors. I don't have to stay hidden"
- melvinmt 10y agoSounds like a perfect spot for Adult Summer Camp: http://campgrounded.org http://campgrounded.org
- pcurve 10y agoNot to be funny, but considering its location and surrounding, I don't think it's attractive as recreational facility. Maybe obesity camp, internet addiction detox camp, or perhaps isolationist religious cults.
- jedberg 10y agoDoing some quick math, if the upkeep is $5M a year, and you do camp 50 weeks a year, it could work out. With 80 homes you could probably easily house 400 people per camp, each camp is 1/2 a week, so you'd need about $110 per person towards upkeep. Probably $100 for food, $100 for staff. It look like they charge about $700 for 3 days, so that still leaves almost $400 per person for all the stuff I didn't think of. The question is whether you could find 400 people 100 times a year.
- deftnerd 10y agoTransportation would be an issue too. Assuming you were targeting individuals across the nation, they would likely be flying into the nearest regional airfield. You would likely have to bus 400 people within the same 4 hour window one or twice a week, so you would have to maintain or rent a fleet of 10 buses and drivers. Unless you were in a very big city, I don't think the taxi/uber infrastructure could handle a surge of 400 long trips within that kind of window.
- cschep 10y agoSCROLL JACK WARNING ARRGHGHHHHHGHHHHHHHH!!!!
- dang 10y agoPlease don't do this. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11749136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11749136 and marked it off-topic.
- walrus01 10y agoGiven the NSA site, I wonder what the availability of commercial DWDM services is to Ashburn, VA from dark fiber owners such as level3, zayo, etc. Locations of buried 288 strand cable and raman amplifier sites would not be too difficult to discover. The US government usually doesn't build its own longhaul fiber.
- Animats 10y agoThere are lots of defunct military bases. Fort Ord, in Monterey, CA, was closed in 1994, and it's still underutilized. Great weather, near the beach, near a reasonably sized city, and still a tough sell. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ord
- saarons 10y agoI went to high school on Fort Ord land and I think the primary reason for it being a tough sell is the unexploded ordnances. Every year we were given a presentation on how to identify old landmines and avoid them. Even with the recent cleanup efforts it's still somewhat dangerous and only the fringes of Fort Ord (where cleanup happened a while ago) are being actively developed.
- walrus01 10y agoSome defunct military bases are still having trouble attracting valuable industrial tenants even after 40 years, example: Closed as an air force base in 1966 and turned over to the local government, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_County_International_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_County_International_Air... Closed as an active SAC bomber air force base in 1969, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton-Sherman_Industrial_Airpark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton-Sherman_Industrial_Air...
- yompers888 10y agoTo be fair, nothing between Monterey/Seaside and Santa Cruz is very built up, and it's all very nice weather, as far as I can tell.
- lazyjones 10y agoOr you could buy approximately 20x as much land in a quiet area of Chile, where there's also very little radio traffic going on and there are much fewer strings attached. Patagonia is also one of the most beautiful spots on earth, IMHO.