https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic>Roadside Picnic is set in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event, the Visitation, which occurred simultaneously in several locations around the Earth over a two-day period. Neither the Visitors themselves nor their means of arrival or departure were ever seen by the local populations, who lived inside the relatively small areas, each a few square kilometers, of the six Visitation Zones. The Zones exhibit strange and dangerous phenomena that are not understood by humans and contain artifacts with inexplicable properties.>The Visitors may not have paid any attention to or even noticed Earth's inhabitants during their visit, just as many humans do not notice or pay attention to insects and wildlife during a picnic>The artifacts and phenomena that are left behind by the Visitors in the Zones were garbage, which are discarded and forgotten without any intentions to advance or damage humanity. There is little chance that the Visitors will return again because for them it was a brief stop, for reasons unknown, on the way to their actual destinationThe book mostly follows the POV of “stalkers” who enter the Zones illegally at night to grab artifacts for profit. Lots of these artifacts act in unexpected and poorly understood ways, which is seen throughout the novel. Also, being near the Zones can lead to strange occurrences, such as the main protagonist’s dead father resurrecting from the dead due to his cemetery being located nearby, or that same main protagonist’s daughter being born mutated.This novel inspired the hit game series “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” which I always thought was cool
Some artifacts from the book:>Batteries - A round black stick (also called So-So) that produced endless energy and can be used to power vehicles instead of an engine. Small, easily portable, and able to replicate through a process similar to cell division. Its power to propel vehicles appears to last indefinitely. A Stalker is said to get 20 for on the market for a battery while the price in Europe is 100.>Death Lamp - "Eight years ago a Stalker by the name of Stefan Norman, nicknamed Four-Eyes, brought out an apparatus from the Zone that, as far as can be judged, was some kind of ray-emitting system fatal to earth organisms. This Four-Eyes offered the apparatus to the Institute. They did not agree on the price. Four-eyes re-entered the Zone and never came out again. The present whereabouts of the apparatus is unknown. People at the Institute are still tearing their hair out over failing to buy it.">Empties - Two copper discs the size of Frisbees, about a quarter inch thick, which permanently maintain an empty space of a foot and a half between each other. It is unknown how the two discs are attracted to each other or what holds them in place. No force seems to be able to push them closer together or pull them apart. It is possible to pass any object through the empty space between the two discs. The device seems to possess no other unusual properties and has the mass of two copper discs of the appropriate size. Possibly a type of a container. One unique specimen, the "full empty," has been found, "filled" with blue liquid. The blue substance sifted cloudily in slow streams between the discs, like a glass jar with blue syrup inside. The "full" specimen was too heavy for one strong man to move, and almost too heavy for two men to move. The novel states that a Stalker can get 400 for an empty while the price of an empty in Europe is said to be 2,500. A Stalker was legally able to get 2 months pay for a full empty
No. You did this yesterday. Save your fucking book reports for after the thanksgiving break.
Some (more) artifacts from the book:>Itchers - A few centimetres in diameter. Squeezing it several times causes strange effects in a radius of a few hundred yards. Dogs start howling and barking as they sense its activation, before humans notice any effects. It affects humans in different ways: some get nose-bleeds, others starts hysterically screaming, some fall into deep depression, others go berserk, and some panic.>Black Sprays - Black beads that are sometimes used in jewelery. A ray of light shone into one of these beads will be delayed in time and distorted. The transmission of the light is delayed depending on the bead’s weight, size, and several other parameters. The light which exits the bead is always less than what entered. No other known properties.>Sponges - Mentioned, but never described in the novel.>Pins - Slightly blue and occasionally spattered with other colors-yellow, red, and green. When squeezed with fingers, a few pins generated "weak red bolts illuminating the pin that were suddenly replaced by slower green pulses." The majority required special machines to cause this effect. Unknown functionality.>Bracelets - Somehow causes the person wearing one to become healthier over time.>Dick the Tramp - Never actually seen, this artifact (if that is even what it is) seems to cause noise and shaking inside the industrial plant in the Zone. A Nobel Prize winning scientist jokes that it could be a wind-up toy that a Visitor child accidentally left behind. Possibly the only long term 'inhabitant' of the Zone.
>>216041279You must be here all day, since I did that late last night
Artifacts (part 3):>Golden Sphere - Also known as the Wish Machine, this universally coveted artifact allegedly grants a wish of a person standing in front of it. It is a copper-colored sphere located behind a bulldozer at the entrance to a quarry inside the Zone. To reach it requires at least two people: The first person will be killed by a phenomenon called the "Meat Grinder" (located next to the bulldozer) which twists and crushes the person until what is left resembles ground meat. Killing someone in this fashion deactivates the Meat Grinder for some time. While the Meat Grinder is dormant, the second person can safely reach the Golden Sphere and make a wish. The Stalker known as Buzzard supposedly made multiple wishes that came true including wishing for a grown son and daughter. Redrick describes his impression of the Wish Machine as: "It lay at the foot of the quarry’s far wall, cosily resting amidst piles of rocks. It lay where it had fallen. Maybe it accidentally fell out of some monstrously huge pocket and got lost or rolled away during a game between giants. It had not been carefully placed here, it had been left behind, littering up the Zone like all the empties, bracelets, batteries, and other rubbish remaining after the Visitation.">Ring - Very rare or possibly unique item. Redrick found one in the novel. It referred to have the size of an actual "ring", and once spun, it never stops, seemingly defying the first law of thermodynamics.>Wriggling Magnet - Very rare or possibly unique item. Removed from the Zone by Stalker nicknamed Buzzard. Redrick suspects that Buzzard was granted a wish by the Golden Sphere to be able to safely retrieve and remove this unique item since it could not otherwise be reached without being killed.
Some spooky phenomena from the book:>Jolly Ghosts - A deadly, abnormal air turbulence that occurs in random parts of the Zone. Some Stalkers believe it to only be a legend but Redrick spots one from a safe distance in the last chapter.>Witches Jelly - The scientists refer to this as a colloidal gas. The substance penetrates any organic material, plus plastic, metal and concrete. Only special ceramic vessels seem to contain it. Almost everything that it touches transforms into more Witches Jelly. It seems to collect in low-lying areas such as basements. At night it looks like alcohol burning with blue tongues. Apparently volatile, as Redrick mentions it "splashing out of the pit" in the garage on its own. Burbridge loses his legs to this in the second section.>Greenie - A green colored substance that slithers like a long, thick snake randomly on the surface of the Zone. Possibly dangerous to humans, other properties unknown.>Mosquito Mange - called gravi-concentrates by scientists. A spot within the Zone which exhibits extremely strong gravity, capable of crushing a person into a pancake or even pulling overhead helicopters violently to the ground. Stalkers search for mosquito manges by throwing small iron bolts ahead of them. If the bolt shoots into the ground at unnaturally high speed and great force, the spot is avoided. A stalker will use bolts to find a path around the Mosquito Mange.>Replicas - Autonomous replicas of people buried in cemeteries inside the Zone before the Visitation. The replicas slowly shuffle about, seemingly possessing no intelligence but will return to the former residence of the deceased. Body parts of the replica are completely autonomous, and continue to function even if cut off. They move in a clumsy fashion>Silver Web - Encountered in the first act. Resembles a large spider web. It is invisible to some people. When the scientist Kirill backed into it, it made a "crackling" sound and vanished but he didn't see anything.
More spookiness:>Spitting Devil's Cabbage - Never explained in the novel. Redrick mentions how the special suits are decent protection against it, so it may be inferred that this is some form of hostile alien plant that spits a harmful substance at anything that gets too close.>Black Bramble - The black bramble supposedly indicates the Zone's border, so presumably this is another form of alien plant life.>Cotton - Mysterious substance that tends to grow on metal, especially antennas. Some Stalkers aboard a helicopter once tried to retrieve an antenna with cotton growing on using a hook on a cable. The cable started smoking and "hissing poisonously", and the cotton started to grow up the cable.>Burning Fluff - Some kind of irritating white fluff. For some reason, the wind never blows it out of the Zone. Redrick mentions how the special suits provide 100% protection against it, so it would seem to be much less threatening than some other Zone phenomena.>Shadows - In several areas in the Zone, shadows are warped and twisted, in the opposite direction of where they should be. Buzzard claims that this phenomenon is "weird but harmless".>Exploding Rainbows - Near the end of the novel, Redrick encounters a section of air "that shimmers and undulates, with hundreds of tiny rainbows exploding and dying". The phenomena's other properties are never explored, but because most anomalies in the Zones are dangerous, the party encountering it detours around it.>Fire - An area of spontaneous combustion. It is unknown whether the spontaneous fires are triggered by the presence of people or not, but Redrick, the experienced Stalker, prefers to move away from anomalous fires, believing more may occur if he stays.>Lightning - A form of pseudo-sentient lightning that originates from purplish-red dots. Found near the swamp leading to the quarry and the Golden Ball.
Last bit of spooks:>Meat Grinder - a deadly anomaly. Outwardly, almost invisible. Anything that enters into the Meat Grinder's target area instantly twists, deforms and breaks into pieces, leaving behind only bloody smears. Only one stalker, Dixon, has ever survived the Meat Grinder, becoming a permanently deformed monstrosity. He always believed that Burbridge saved him. The Meat Grinder is located across the only path leading to the Golden Sphere. After the Meat Grinder is "triggered", it becomes inactive for a long time, allowing people walking behind the victim to safely pass through. The stalker Burbridge lured unsuspecting companions to their deaths by the Meat Grinder to reach the Golden Sphere alone.>Shimmer - "Over the pile of old refuse, over broken glass and rags, crawled a shimmering, a trembling, sort of like hot air at noon over a tin roof. It crossed over the hillock and moved on and on toward us, right next to the pylon; it hovered for a second over the road - or did I just imagine it? - and slithered into the field, behind the bushes and the rotten fences, back there toward the automobile graveyard."
>>216041305I was here for about two hours last night and I've been here for an hour today. Thanks for the motivation to leave for a few days.
>>216041391Doubtful You’re terminally online
>>216041259Like picrel
>>216041465Did you actually like this movie? I watched it in theaters and it was ok
7 episodes talking about going to The Zone(tm)Episode 8 going to The Zone(tm)Check out Season 2 for more adventures in The Zone(tm)Show cancelled six months later
>>216041493
>>216041400no, the terminally online are on permanent disability for mental illness or morbid obesity and I don't qualify for either so I have to work.
>>216041493Missed the interracial romance and the sidecut ambigiously brown know it all tough girl introduced in episode 1.Also, The Zone exists because of Evil Corporation run byyyy
>>216041482It was visually appealing, all female cast was not forced on the audience (it didn't distract me from the movie), the plot and dialogues was mediocre, but I didn't expect anything extraordinary. You can feel that's a book adaptation, probably for the better. Actually really good advertisement for the book.
>>216041520I hope you’re not in sales, since that was bad
>>216041546I read the book a while back, actually after reading Roadside PicnicI was let down, but I guess that isn’t fair since the 1979 novel is a classic, while the 2014 Annihilation was just a product of its time
>>216041493>What is this? Some kinda Zone?
>>216041611>AutoZone™ commercial begins to play
