"Monitoring the event horizon of science fiction"

The classic Russian science fiction novel of 1972 Roadside Picnic depicts the visitation of Earth by aliens who leave behind Artifacts which warp the physical reality surrounding them, causing Zones of disturbed space. This scenario was eerily evoked in 1986 when Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Power Plant exploded, creating massive changes to the surrounding landscape, with the majority of decontaminations occurring inside an area variously referred to as The Chernobyl Zone, The 30 Kilometer Zone, The Zone of Exclusion, The Fourth Zone, or just The Zone. As the entire area was evacuated, the strange few researchers who remained behind referred to themselves as "Stalkers," the novel's term for Artifact hunters. As the fictional reality continued to erupt into our own, it also began to work the other way, and in this way the game known as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was born, creating new versions of the Zone for Stalkers to play in. The future is a place of many interacting and coexisting futures.

EDIT: Dedicated Stalkers will certainly benefit from a viewing of this custom-built PC casemod which replicates the #4 reactor core (pictured above, the alien monolith from Shadow of Chernobyl; more detailed pics here and all throughout the thread). It's easily the best casemod this researcher has seen, handily beating the Matrix-themed mod I saw last year.