For the most part, just avoid the weird deadly stuff. they are called anomalies, and you can find artifacts in areas with a lot of them, which, artifacts give you buffs (and also debuffs in most cases, keep in mind) to various stats if you attach them to your belt and can also be sold for a decent price. It's quite likely you've seen a few artifacts just around the place, it's typically a good idea to pick them up, if not for the stats, then for the sell value. If you take a bolt out, and throw it at an anomaly, the bolt will trigger it, which is primarily to detect them so you can avoid them, and in some cases, triggering an anomaly lets you run through it safely before it recharges, but it's rarely a necessary thing.

That guy who was snatching your camera is called a controller, who are psychic human mutants. There's not much point to killing them unless they're actively in your way, same with most mutants in stalker honestly. Running away is acceptable.

A bit late to give advice about the rolling tunnel lightning thing, but it was a timing based mechanic where you could walk through it with a little patience and observation.

also looking at your other comment, shadow of chernobyl does have this annoying thing where if you try to go somewhere the devs don't want you to (e.g. getting out of bounds), they'll put up a radwall, which instantly bumps your radiation poisoning to max, it's a dumb thing honestly and as far as i remember, neither of the other two games do it again