In 1972, the creation of two great writers - the Strugatsky brothers - the book "Roadside Picnic" was published. She made a splash. The very idea of forming some terrible and mysterious anomalous zone described in the book was amazing. In the nineteen seventy-ninth year, Andrei Tarkovsky released the film "Stalker", based on the book "Picnic on the Sidelines." Naturally, he made no less sensation in the USSR than the novel of the Strugatsky brothers. Tarkovsky was able to film and revive the heroes loved by people and allowed him to rethink the plot of the novel and understand more deeply who such a stalker is.
In 1986, the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was destroyed by a powerful thermal explosion. The radioactive dust caught by the wind turned the thirty-kilometer territory around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant into a terrible and lifeless zone of complete alienation.
All these events could not but trigger a new wave of legends about the anomalous exclusion zone, and at the end of March 2007 the Ukrainian company of video game developers GSC Game World released its creation: the first part of the cult game STALKER called "Shadow of Chernobyl", which immediately became popular in Of Russia.
The next part of the game called "Clear Sky" was released in August 2008, it was the background to the events of the first part and was received by the players with great interest.
The last of this series is the game "Call of Pripyat", which is a sequel to the first part.
Each of the games has its own legend. For example, in the game “Stalker. Call of Pripyat” the oasis is such, in “Shadow of Chernobyl” it is a wish-fulfiller, but in “Clear Sky” - the so-called zone-marked ones.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to feel all the darkness and loneliness of the exclusion zone, only by listening to or reading about it. You can understand it by becoming a part of it. By 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 has been written about the zone and about stalkers, and the most famous of them is the collection of Vasily Orekhov, consisting of three books of the Stalker series: The Destruction Zone, the second - The Line of Fire, the third - The Shelling Sector . The main characters are adventurers looking for adventure, or hunters driven by a thirst for profit, go to the exclusion zone with different goals, but they are all connected by the same fate of a loner, a tramp and a hero who decided to challenge nature and show everyone who stalker is.
Of course, stalkers exist in the real world, but they differ radically from the heroes of games and books. A stalker is a person who penetrates or visits various abandoned places exposed to radiation. They are also mercenaries who escort people for money to various anomalous or prohibited areas.
But most often, stalkers are called thrill-seekers who penetrate the exclusion zone and look for artifacts, for example, banners, medals, coins, or other things that can serve as a reminder of the exclusion zone. I think after this there are no questions about who such a stalker is.