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Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky and based on the novel Roadside Picnic (1972) by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Stalker (1979) follows three men who embark on a journey to a place called “the Zone” where legend has it; there is a room that grants the deepest wish of those who enter it. However, this dystopian classic alludes to some real-life events in Russia’s past.

During the middle of the 20th century there were many nuclear testing facilities throughout the former Soviet Union, which the public was unaware of. Towns and villages near these facilities were closed off due to fear that radiation might spread and lead to widespread poisoning. Nobody was allowed in or out. If explosions occurred most of the populated areas were evacuated. But, those nearest to the site often weren’t told. One of the most common excuses given for the explosion’s noise was that a meteor hit, much like the legends surrounding “the Zone’s” origins.

One such example took place in the city of Ozyorsk, which in 1957 suffered a radiological contamination. This event came to be known as the Kyshtym Disaster, named after the nearest town since Ozyorsk wasn’t printed on any of the maps. Even though some nearby towns were evacuated within a week of the incident, it took years for other towns, such as Ozyorsk to be evacuated. But, by then it was too late. Many of the residents had contracted cancer and other diseases caused by the radiation. Coming in at number 3 in terms of the most severe nuclear disasters ever recorded, Russian authorities didn’t make it public until 1976, eighteen years after the explosion.

In Stalker, the unnamed city in the unnamed country at the beginning and end of the film is surrounded by fences and policed by armed guards. However, the Stalker’s (Alexander Kaidanovsky) aim is to break the Writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko) out of the closed city and bring them to the mysterious “Zone,” which the public is forbidden to enter. He also has a daughter named Monkey (Natasha Abramova) living in the city. She cannot walk or talk, and is referred to as one of the many “Zone Children,” who have been born with deformities because their parent(s) were exposed to radiation.

Although Stalker was released seven years before the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on April 26, 1986 in the northern city of Pripyat in the former Ukrainian SSR, there are certainly parallels between Tarkovsky’s film and the worst nuclear accident ever recorded. Thyroid cancer rates skyrocketed in Belarus as a result of the accident, abortion requests rose not just in Russia, but also throughout Europe, and the long-term health effects are still being investigated.

Water contamination was also a major concern. Stalker has a clear environmental message, as Tarkovsky’s camera lingers on a wide range of debris, ranging from guns, syringes, and coins that litter the possibly radioactive fluid that at one point or another helps to symbolically baptize all three of the men. Downed telephone poles also resemble crosses, alluding to the lack of faith in both the former Soviet Union and Stalker’s fictional universe.

Chernobyl Diaries (2012) involves a group of American tourists that hire an extreme tour guide, like the Stalker, to sneak them into the condemned site. Also, since the depopulation of the surrounding area, now called the “Chernobyl Exclusion Zone,” some of those employed to take care of the abandoned power plant have come to refer to themselves as “stalkers.”