Cordon

Cordon is the entry point from and to the Big Land, and also the starting location of the game.
== Railway ==
The railway is being patrolled by the military. Being seen by them is fine, but never attack them or cross their patrolling route. Doing this makes Kuznetsov hostile as well, and he's a major quest NPC. You can bribe the military through Sidorovich for 250,000RU (!) to calm them down, but it's a huge sum in the early game, and it's easier to just avoid the patrol entirely or reload if you botched it.
Stalkers fighting the patrol is absolutely normal, just don't try helping them, unless you have some buggy situation like Fox fighting Kuznetsov. (in which case you'd better reload or run away to put them offline where they won't fight)
Soldiers under the bridge are OK to approach, they won't shoot. Don't attempt to steal their vodka and food, they will tear you apart (Sherstyuk warns you about that in a message as you approach them the first time). You can take any other items, though.
=== Crossing the railway safely ===
* Through the checkpoint, bribing the soldiers with vodka. You'll get the Honest Taxpayer achievement once you did this 20 times.
* Across the fence, under the big loud anomaly in the sky. Crossing to south is an easy jump; crossing to north is a bit harder and requires a crouch jump.
* Through the electra tunnel. Crossing to north is trivial, crossing south requires discharging electras with a bolt and sprinting through immediately with the proper timing.
* Through the east end, near the locomotive. Beware of the heavy radiation, though.
== Military checkpoint ==
The checkpoint is heavily guarded at first. Attempting to attack them without a sniper rifle and either RPG-7 or lots of 40mm grenades will probably not end well for you, as they have 2 BTRs, 5 (!) helicopters, and several dozen soldiers. You can sneak inside at night along the east fence, though.
However, once the defense forces have been wiped, the checkpoint will be guarded by much smaller squad, just like in vanilla. Good time for the first attack on the checkpoint is after disabling the X-16 brain (completing Get out of laboratory), because after that point, enemies will start dropping exosuits. Refer to Armor#Availability for details.
There's a minefield before the checkpoint. Throw bolts to check for the mines. You can destroy this minefield later in Sapper.
== Transitions ==
* The location itself is known from the start.
* Dump, to and from: after accepting the Find documents of the military quest from Sidorovich.
* Darkscape, to and from: during Get out of Dark Valley.
* to Agroprom: from Guide for bringing him the map in Tricky stash.
** from Agroprom: found in a document on the third floor of the Agroprom research institute.
* Swamps, to and from: from Devotee after Protect the novices camp from the mercenaries.
* Bar, to and from: in a PDA found at the end of the sequence in Strelok's stash. This transition costs 9000 RU to use.
== Out-of-bounds exits ==
* The tree next to the anomalous crater containing Fenrir's PDA allows you to exit the area.
== Notes ==
* The corpse under the bridge starts the Sniper questline, and spawns the hostile sniper with a silenced rifle across the road on the hill. Don't be surprised if you die all of a sudden. Refer to Serviceman's PDA for more information.
* The loudspeaker at the military checkpoint can be turned off by pressing F on it.
== Interactive map ==
== Bugs ==
* Half of the patrol is sleeping under the bridge at night. They usually don't wake up, but on loading a save in close proximity they could wake up for a split second and shoot you.
* Very rarely, a bunch of bandits will spawn between Rookie village and military checkpoint (at the Swamps exit), aggravating the military and launching a retailation raid against stalkers.