Gamegeneral said:
In the zone, stalker. I fail horribly.
Damn, I was going to say this. It's especially interesting because it's so easy to tell whether or not a person in real life would survive in the Zone. You can go even further with it and tell how well certain pairings or groupings of people would do in the Zone.
For example, I have terrible observational skills, but I have very good "Zone logic." That is, I can easily determine if something is out of place, or how it may have wound up where it is and why, and how it should be approached, if it should in the first place. So I can tell everything about an object, but I would have trouble noticing it in the first place. I would die quickly because I wouldn't be able to react accordingly to my surroundings.
I have a friend, though, who notices everything but has terrible "Zone logic." He wouldn't be able to figure out whether or not something in the Zone would be dangerous unless it's obvious, because he's too set-in-stone about how the world works.
So we would survive together, but on our own we would die.
The Zone is a very interesting concept, and I've spent many hours in deep thought about it. (If you really liked the game, read Roadside Picnic. It's the book the game was based on, and it's very, very good.)
Of course, perhaps I'm less fascinated by the whole thing than you are...
