The Fate of the Stalker: Roadside Picnic and Environmental Terror

One of my favorite movies of all time is a film by Andrei Tarkovsky, "Stalker" (called "The Zone" in its English release).  I stumbled upon this film while scanning cable channels late one night with my parents asleep. I first saw characters walking through a field of grass, tentatively, cautiously, stopping and throwing little objects to test the path. The reason for their caution was unclear, but the guide was utterly dedicated to it. He had little bolts with cloth tied to them that he would toss.  It was a slow film, but it intrigued me, and I kept coming back to it as it progressed.

One bolt the guide tossed sailed through the air – and made no sound when it fell. The characters tensed. Did the grass just muffle the sound? Or something else?

I highly recommend watching the film – it is an engaging story and beautifully shot. Tarkovsky was an incredible filmmaker, and the movie is full of gorgeous scenes from abandoned factories and overgrown fields and dilapidated Russian architecture.  For me, watching it is almost a meditative experience, as there are often very long, slow panning cuts, sometimes with narration overlaid. The dialogue and the characters are excellent, witty and biting, each character keeping their own reason close to chest for venturing into this strange place.

The movie was inspired by a piece of Russian fiction called Roadside Picnic, a story about an area of Russia that is suddenly designated "off-limits" due to a variety of strange anomalies and artifacts that appear overnight – perhaps left by aliens – and cause havoc for anyone who ventures within or brings the artifacts out.  As in the film, the word Stalker here takes a different meaning than is common today; it is used for those who regularly travel into the zone, learn its strange rules, and guide others through.  They are Stalkers – those who stalk the zone.

In addition to the film, another piece of entertainment was also spawned by the book – the game Stalker: Shadows of Chernobyl and its many sequels and spinoffs (currently discounted on Steam's Halloween sale).  Although the game emphasizes more of the fantastic elements of the original book than the film does, it also makes a pretty clear connection between the unearthly anomalies and the very real disaster that occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.  It effectively creates a link between the fear of radiation and the fear of the unknown, both threats that operate on a level beyond what our instincts have trained us to cope with – things we can't see, smell, hear, or taste, but which can kill us easily if we aren't careful. Frequently, in the game, you must avoid radiation hazards along with more otherworldly threats such as gravitational anomalies or mutated creatures.

Stalker is an excellent atmospheric shooter, a beautiful recreation of many of the areas in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and an occasionally terrifying game.  It has some interesting RPG elements in resource and inventory management, and a lot of exploration in discovering and plundering abandoned sites.  However, there is something interesting about the actual history behind the book and the film that the title of the game glosses over quite effortlessly – a fact which is a bit hard to believe looking back at these works. In truth, both Roadside Picnic (1971) and Stalker (1979), fictions the game draws heavily on, were written and released before the Chernobyl disaster even occurred (1986). This is a strange thing to consider: Chernobyl and the surrounding area are even today still off-limits, due to invisible forces that are a threat to human life. In effect, humanity created the zone envisioned in Roadside Picnic.

In reality, no alien intervention was necessary; there is nothing mystical about radiation.  The science is mostly understood, its effect on humans is mostly understood, and its sources are mostly understood.  It only defies reason in the fact of its pervasiveness and persistence, its potential as a disaster that extends far beyond our own timescale – a disaster that we can create, but not stop, and not outlive. The strange threats observed in the original book – the Witch's Jelly that dissolves bone but passes through all other matter, the gravity anomalies that can catch and crush the unwary to pulp, the invisible, suffocating webs – they pale in comparison to what we are actually capable of.

And beyond this, in cruel irony, even before there was a Chernobyl zone, the actors in the film Stalker were themselves subject to the very real invisible terrors of environmental contamination. The factory many scenes of the film was shot in was an old chemical plan. Many of the environments and materials visible in the film were toxic or carcinogenic. As a result, a large portion of the actors who worked in the film passed away just years after due to a variety of health complications - including the director, Tarkovsky.

Yet these works are not without some form of hope.  All three of the fictional expressions of this myth have in common the idea of a Grail of some kind, the one artifact hiding in the zone that can fix everything, grant any wish. All you must do is find it.  In the book, it's a golden orb.  In the film, a room. In the game, a monolithic structure.  These places and things are what the Stalkers seek: they dream to be the one who finds the one artifact that can change the world or change their own life for the better. In this way, the fiction suggests that we can find a solution, if we can survive long enough.  The same power to destroy and corrupt can be used to cure, if wielded with knowledge and compassion (the compassion part is very important at the end of Roadside Picnic).

In reality, the stakes are indeed very high for us, as both individuals and as a species.  At this point, the damage we are able to do to the world may actually outlive those with knowledge of it.  We are entirely capable of being the aliens of the novel, the advanced race that left its toys behind quite accidentally, disfiguring the earth not only physically but almost metaphysically, creating fields and areas that are lethal and, thousands of years later, not understood by any living creature.  This could create ways of life akin to the stalkers', where the land is alive and unpredictable in new ways, where the only safe way is the careful, roundabout way, threading between unseen disasters.

Yet that vague hope exists that one of the toys left behind will be the key to fixing everything.  A foolish hope, perhaps, given that it is always easier to destroy than to create or repair.  Why would we leave things broken if we had the power to fix them?  Perhaps the real lessons that Roadside Picnic and its offspring can teach us are, first: that we must leave knowledge behind as well. We must always teach those that come after how the world works, how it is broken, and how it might be fixed eventually.  If we fall into the superstition of the Stalkers and those they guide, testing the next step only and living day to day, we will have forgotten why the rules are there and who made them.  If we seek only to survive that next step, then we give up on our ability to change the whole.  We can help the life that comes after us understand the messes we leave behind, and we can hope that someday, they will be cleaned up.

Second: don't litter.