To sell them on the black market or trying to find the 'truth' behind the Zone. Mercenaries, bounty hunters and explorers ventured further and further into the heart of the Zone driven by reports of strange 'artifacts' imbued with anomalous energy. The Zone is still a dangerous place and a threat to all mankind. The Zone was cordoned off by the military, who would shoot on sight anyone foolish enough to get inside. Soviet authorities established an 'Exclusion Zone' around, but a second explosion hit the reactor in 2006, creating The Zone as we know it – dangerous place, filled with mutated creatures, deadly radiation, and a strange, anomalous energy. In 1986, the world's worst nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
