Holing up in a tech dead-zone sounds like nonsense to many an Internet addict.

CNN: Camping: Horror or bliss?

But it concludes that the oil is continuing to break up and disperse underneath the surface, making the emergency of a major oxygen-poor dead zone unlikely.

CNN: No signs of 'dead zone' in Gulf, feds say

So when a phone clerk said the "World Edition" BlackBerry could keep him connected--even in Japan, a notorious dead zone for Western phones and personal digital assistants--Kozarsky was sold.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Instead, gas and dust would simply have orbited around our star without moving inward, creating a so-called "dead zone" in the disk.

MSN: Earth's hot formation may be reason behind water shortage

Some are so vast that the center is a countertop "dead zone, " a hard-to-reach place for spills to puddle.

WSJ: Kitchen Islands Get More Built-In Appliances, Storage and Features

Farmers within a 1.8 mile (3km) protection zone of Cellardyke - where the infected dead swan was found - were ordered to move their birds inside.

BBC: Chicken roast dinner

And because the bacteria use oxygen in the water as they digest oil, scientists are concerned that process could cause an oxygen-depleted area underwater a "dead zone" that could choke off a variety of undersea life.

WSJ: Gauging Harm to Ecosystem Could Take Years

When teachers guide students in gaining awareness that industrial agriculture writ large, for example, results in chemical runoff from nitrogen-based fertiliers in the Mississippi River that in turn creates a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico so large that it is visible to the human eye through satellite distant imaging, students are able to grasp the basis for sustainable agriculture.

FORBES: Daniel Goleman on the Importance of Ecological Intelligence

The dead zone drives shrimp farther out to sea, making it costlier and more time-consuming to catch them.

ECONOMIST: Nutrient pollution