| 1 | Despite the [[NonindicativeName pleasant sounding title]], ''Literature/RoadsidePicnic'' is easily one of the darker science fiction novels to come out of the East Bloc in the mid-20th century, and has some scenes that will keep you up at night: |
| 2 | |
| 3 | * What happened to the residents of the Plague Quarter after the Visitation is never explored in detail. What we ''are'' told, though, isn't pretty. In the first chapter, Red describes a math teacher he had while growing up in Harmont who lived in the Quarter. The plague apparently caused the loss of his skin and fingernails. Most of the victims who weren't elderly apparently didn't die, [[AndIMustScream but this may or may not be a good thing depending on whether and to what extent they recovered]]. |
| 4 | * When Kirill backs into the "cobweb" Red hears a horrific shriek, but Kirill experiences nothing at all. Later on after leaving the Zone he dies suddenly of a heart attack. This raises questions about whether those who enter the Zone are truly safe even after they leave the Zone. Later remarks about Zone inhabitants having an impact on the local rates of other accidents confirm that we truly do not understand the degree to which people who enter the Zone, or were present during the Visit, were altered by it. |
| 5 | * Hell Slime is a poisonous blue goop that can slowly liquefy a person's body after even minor contact. This is apparently a very painful process, accompanied by plenty of screaming and requiring amputation of any affected body part. It can also turn some materials into more of itself which ends in tragedy for the unscrupulous lab looking to weaponize it. |
| 6 | * The fate of children born to parents who spend too much (or possibly ''any'') time in the Zones. While they may initially look unusual but behave normally, they slowly become more animalistic until they reach the point where they are no longer really human. |
| 7 | * The reanimated corpses. The Zone is capable of bringing a person buried there back to life, but only in the sense that their body gets up and moves. They're bloated, decomposing, stinking horrors made harmless but maybe more terrible by the fact that they only want to go home. In a later chapter Red's father comes back like this, leading to a scene where Red pretends that he is still alive while his old friend Noonan is in the room. The corpse even tries to drink a small amount of alcohol from a glass cup (and eventually succeeds). |
| 8 | * The sound sometimes made by the corpses and by children mutated by the Zone. The sound is enough to drive the protagonist to a week-long drinking binge, although the fact that it comes from his own father and daughter doesn't help. |
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