An Idiot in the Wasteland: Day 2

It transpires that a PDF of the Fallout manual was installed along with the game, so I perused that before trying again. Also, some reflection revealed the mystery of the overhead map, which appears, at this time, to be a way to handle traveling long distances without requiring a lot of walking around boring wasteland, or else a lot of expensive to develop content. Perfectly reasonable, in other words.
So it turns out that Fallout doesn’t autosave, or at least not often, and my last character no longer existed. So I made a new character, skipped the cutscene of Mr. Scary Eyebrow Dude explaining why they’re kicking me out into a nuclear wasteland before being kicked out into a nuclear wasteland. I wander around the cave murdering rats before meandering out into the wasteland proper. From the overhead map, I make tracks for Vault 13. Just before arriving, the little red x I assume represents me stops moving and is replaced by a lightning bolt.
Once again using my keen gaming senses, I figure this means I’m being subjected to a random encounter, so I click the little green arrow that shows my location, blitz through the loading screen, and am dropped into the middle of a brown map right next to two large scorpion things. I’m fairly certain that these are radscorpions, and even more certain that they aren’t here to offer me tea and crumpets or else so I shoot them a few times. They sting me, dropping my nearly to hitpoints to zero, and I beat a tactical retreat. This is when I realize that I can walk faster than the scorpions, and so amble away from them towards the shaded border of the zone. This is a bit of a gamble, since I’m not certain that I will be allowed to leave the area with enemies present, but it seems to work since it shows me the overland map screen again.
I click on Vault 13, but instead get sent to a zone identical to the one I just left, albeit devoid of enormous scorpion thing. I walk to the border, which pulls up the overland map again. I try to move to Vault 13, but get bounced right back the empty desert zone. I try this a few more times, but with the same result, before I’m informed that I’ve died, I assume of exposure.
So far my progress has not been extraordinary. It’s not that I mind a bit of a learning curve in games, but this is ridiculous. Dying of exposure, if that’s what happened, is awesome, but I’d like to be told I’m dying of exposure. It’s not exactly as if telling me that would do anything to break immersion. Again, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has a near vertical difficulty curve in the beginning of the game, and even later on there’s plenty of weird stuff that happens without explanation, but the fundamental information you need is usually made quite available- and this is a game that models bleeding, burning, blunt force trauma, bullet penetration and stopping power, radiation, exhaustion and hunger. Still, the atmosphere is strangely compelling, so I think I’ll keep dickering away at it.