Who is a stalker? What is an abnormal zone?

In 1972, the creation of two great writers - the Strugatsky brothers - the book "Picnic on the Roadside" was published. She made a splash. The very idea of the formation of some terrible and mysterious anomalous zone, described in the book, was amazing. In the year nineteen seventy-nine, Andrei Tarkovsky released the film "Stalker", based on the book "Picnic on the Roadside." Naturally, he made no less furore in the USSR than the Strugatsky brothers' novel. Tarkovsky was able to film and revive people who loved people and allowed him to rethink the plot of the novel and to understand more deeply who the stalker is.

In 1986, the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was destroyed as a result of a powerful thermal explosion. Radioactive dust, picked up by the wind, turned the thirty-kilometer area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant into a terrible and lifeless zone of complete alienation.

All these events could not but cause a new wave of legends about the abnormal exclusion zone, and at the end of March 2007, the Ukrainian video game developer GSC Game World released its creation: the first part of the cult game STALKER called "The Shadow of Chernobyl", which immediately became popular Russia. The next part of the game called "Clear Sky" was released in August 2008, it was the prelude to the events of the first part and was accepted by the players with great interest. The last of this series is the game "Call of Pripyat", which is the sequel to the first part. Each game has its own legend. For example, in the game "Stalker Call of Pripyat" an oasis is one, in the "Shadow of Chernobyl" it is a performer of desires, well, in "Clear Sky" - so-called labeled zone.

And still feel all the darkness and loneliness of the exclusion zone is impossible, only by listening or reading about it. You can understand it by becoming a part of it. Reading a book or playing a video game, you become one with the hero and begin to understand what this zone is and who such a stalker is.

Now a whole series of books about the zone and stalkers has been written, and the most famous of them is Vasily Orekhov's collection consisting of three books of the Stalker series: "Zone of defeat", the second one - "Line of Fire", the third - "Shooting Sector" . The main characters are adventurers seeking adventures, or hunters, driven by a greed for profit, go into a zone of alienation for different purposes, but they are all connected by the same fate of a singleton, vagabond and hero who decided to challenge nature and show everyone who is a stalker.

Of course, stalkers exist in the real world, but from the heroes of games and books they differ radically. Stalker is a person who penetrates or visits various abandoned places exposed to radiation. They are also mercenaries who conduct people for money in various anomalous or forbidden zones.

But most often stalkers are called thrill-seekers who penetrate the exclusion zone and search for themselves artifacts, for example, banners, medals, coins or other things that can serve as a reminder of the zone of complete alienation. I think after that there are no more questions about who such a stalker is.