Characters have conflicting feelings about both the alien visitation and the Zone itself. They sometimes even have conflicting feelings within themselves! At one point, Dick Noonan thinks about the Zone as a sore on the land:

It turned out that the sore wasn't such a sore; maybe it wasn't a sore at all but, instead, a treasure trove . . . And now no one has a clue what it is—a sore, a treasure trove, an evil temptation, Pandora's box, a monster, a demon . . . We're using it bit by bit.

Now, the Zone doesn't seem like such a sore because a lot of really fascinating technology was left behind by the aliens and humans have been able to make some use of it. At the same time, they don't really understand the technology they've found, and a great many people have actually died attempting to retrieve objects from the Zone. Despite this, others cannot keep themselves away because of the promise of wealth. They pretty much all die. It's sort of a perfect example of how something can be both a blessing and a curse: these technologies have the ability to advance humanity, but they might also destroy us.

Soon, Noonan also thinks,

The problem is we don't notice the years pass, he thought. Screw the years—we don't notice things change. We know that things change, we've been told since childhood that things change, we've witnessed things change ourselves many a time, and yet we're still utterly incapable of noticing the moment that change comes—or we search for change in all the wrong places.

He realizes that times have changed, that the way people view and interact with the Zone has changed, that he and his kind have become old and obsolete. However, this same kind of sentiment is probably shared by most people who grow old. Change seems to happen so gradually that we are unaware of small, daily, weekly, monthly changes, but suddenly we realize that years have passed and so much is different.

Noonan and Dr. Pittman discuss humanity and the aliens. Pittman says,

Humanity as a whole is too stable a system, nothing upsets it.

This is quite an interesting idea, that we would ultimately not be that affected by an alien visitation because humanity is so stable that nothing really shakes it. It seems true. No matter what terrible things have happened to people, or what terrible things people or governments or armies have done, no matter what happens to the environment, etc., we seem to continue to repeat old behaviors. We don't ever really change that much. Life goes on, and we seem built to overcome tragedy and pain and fear.

After an alien Visitation reaches Earth in six locations, humankind must come to terms with the alien detritus and toxic substances in the Zones of contact, which cause such problems as birth defects and mutations. Yet the artifacts found there, which are coveted by collectors, are retrieved by “stalkers” for trafficking on the black market. A trafficker turned scientific research assistant, Red Schuhart, is a protagonist who risks serious injury in his varied pursuits. He and his research director, Kirill Panov, head into the Zone nearest them to try to retrieve a specimen. Red describes the borderlands and the Visitation’s effects.

The houses in the Plague Quarter are peeling and lifeless…. Now at night when you crawl by, you can see the glow inside, as if alcohol were burning in bluish tongues. That’s the hell slime radiating from the basement. But mostly it looks like an ordinary neighborhood, with ordinary houses, nothing special...