General Discussion

Nothing out of the ordinary, just native Ohioans

Do you need to know?

It could be interesting to have it just be a canonical "black hole, ie nobody knows what's there - it started with people, animals and plants disappearing and then jumped to hills, buildings and even weather systems until there was nothing there at all as far as the outside world is aware; nobody who goes there ever comes back, satellite photos come back corrupted, and people are scared to even mention it

What are the rules of the world?

Ohio is a perfectly nice place filled with perfectly nice people. Exceptionally, creepily, contagiously nice.

It could be an area for nuclear waste. Long term nuclear waste signage is an interesting concept. How can you make sure an area is understood as dangerous for 10,000 years?

Here is a Wikipedia article on it but ideas include fields of thorns like this image

but you could add other elements like menacing rock blocks.

If you want you could have mutated wild life that inhabits the zone.

If I recall correctly some places employ people to shoot birds and what-not that enter so a military precense may make sense for several reasons.

Bonus for those interested here's a BBC article on the concept

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200731-how-to-build-a-nuclear-warning-for-10000-years-time

Have you ever read Roadside Picnic, the book the STALKER stuff is loosely based on? I highly recommend it and I love that they really have no idea what The Zone is. The best suggestion was from a scientist saying that we were like ants goggling at the trash and crumbs left behind after some beings beyond our ability to comprehend had a roadside picnic during a trip to our planet and left it all behind. We never witnessed the beings themselves, but their refuse is like gold and/or poison to us and we can barely comprehend any of it.

There were many immediate dangers within The Zone, but I like to think the main reason it was closed off was because some anomalies acted contagious to materials, such that metals could contract the effects and spread them to other metals. Imagine that getting out.

It's Ohio in an alternate timeline. They don't want you to know what you're missing out on. But some evil lurks beneath the surface, of course.

Have you seen the show Threshold?

A crystalline growth which can make people go mental or take over them to become worker drones.

Alternatively, sticking with the crystal theme. Tiberum.

How "settled" are you to it being based in Ohio? Sorry, but all the memes a few months ago just ruined my ability to take "The Ohio Exclusion Zone" seriously. Maybe consider basing it near Lower Appalachia? Like West Virginia through western North Carolina? There are plenty of Appalachian folklore monsters you could use for the area. Wendigos are one.

Hell, you could even have some kind of nuclear leak from Oak Ridge, TN, be the cause.

Just wind turbines as far as the eye can see.

The noise and "radiation" is contained by the wall.

What about it being a giant lake, black, where faces peak out occasionally, screaming? That it turns out that every person killed recently was is having their soul harvested and its being drawn to this place. Here there are also strange abominations who feast on the orb, devouring the souls inside. This is bad enough but what if there's evidence of cooperation with humans? Like tech that was made for them? Or some logo that's visible somewhere and recognizable. Or multiple logos of all warring factions.

It's Ohio. It's filled with stupid. (Source: grew up there.)

play into the weird horror.

Ohio is a wasteland of eldritch horror, the likes of which drives those exposed to a state of insanity.

those guarding the border are administered anterograde amnesia drugs before every patrol, preventing formation of long term memories and preventing them from going mad.