These heavily polluted areas are off-limits to all personnel, period. Whether it is nuclear fallout from post-meltdown reactors, or storage pits for toxic waste, these areas supposedly harbour no life whatsoever. However, these areas are also the perfect place to hide from prying eyes, and all sorts of black-operations take place here, from secret Consortium prisons, to undercover Toy Soldier training camps.

So far, the following exclusion zones have been defined:

• Central United States
  Centred around Kansas City, Missouri; this exclusion zone was erected due to an nuclear detonation caused by an ICBM launched by a rogue element in the former Soviet Union.
• Western American Zone
  Discovery of severe radiation damage due to the persistent nuclear testing conducted by the now-defunct United States. It has continued to be used as a testing zone and is an irradiated wasteland with chemical wastes which sometimes blow out and cause the closure of the Western Motorway
• Midlands Zone
  The (former) centre of British industry, it has been deemed unsafe for human habitation. Pollution, fallout from nuclear meltowns, and a small outbreak of "grey goo" (self-replicating robots which consume organic material with which to self-replicate)
• Rochefort Zone
  This zone encompasses a twenty-mile exclusion of the land surrounding the Bay of Biscay. The official story involves a sunken nuclear submarine, but rumour has it there is a large underwater archology operating on the oceanic shelf in the Bay, and they are making sure no one finds it.