Especially if you wind up doing it early on, when all you have is a double-barrel, a pistol, a duster and whatever weapons and ammo you pry off the corpses of the military guys you kill.
Only the strongest, the smartest, or the luckiest could survive in the Zone. There are patches of radiation, dangerous monsters, anomalies that can turn your body to pulp, blowouts, emissions that will fry your brain, and bandits. Imagine you're living out somewhere in the world, and a grizzled old Russian man in a battered leather duster is telling you this story in a bar. Considering that a player is lucky if they have a barely functioning AK 74, there are a lot of tales about encountering the bloodsucker, having both weapons jam, forcing you to go toe to toe with the bloodsucker using the knife or die. You move into the corridor expecting it to come at you in a frontal attack, but it attacks you from behind. You see the bloodsucker on the other side of the room.
That area forces you into a very tight, narrow corridor to get around a huge generator. The weapons and equipment you have by that stage are generally poor, and that single creature is more than enough to either kill you outright or give you a big beating for a crowning moment of your own.