Okay, stealing a good idea from Stalker. Anomalies.
There are regions of the blasted world that are extremely dangerous. These are psychic areas that have malign effects on those that enter them. With the right Intuition rolls, you can hold off the effects... with an overwhelm, you can gather up part of the disturbance and hold it in your heart. This not only weakens it (making it possible for the Low Beasts, with really high Intuition stats, to eventually clear out anomalies/zones completely) but the Beast can later choose to release that energy in a spell-like blast of concentrated anomaly effects.
Boiler: a region where all liquids start to heat and boil. It's parched and dry. No rain falls... rivers turn to steam shortly after entering them. Living creatures may burn up from the inside if they fail to resist. The edges will be covered with bones. Energy gathered here can be used to harm foes or cure disease.
Melter: all materials turn jelly-like and mold themselves into distorted shapes, then resume their solid forms. Forms are simply not constant. Living beings tend to survive the effect, but be so horribly twisted that they go mad from the pain. It's thought that the Horrors (robots clearly meant to terrify those they hunt down and slay) may well come from a factory facility inside a Melter. Energy gathered here can transform foes or heal wounds/cure maimings.
Death Zone: the radiation here doesn't fade away, it gets stronger. Wounds don't heal right. Everything sickens and dies. It's unlikely to kill you right away, but injuries from it take months to heal. A beast with the right Intuition skills can theoretically drain the death zone energy out of you and restore your normal health right away. Energy drained here can kill or be used to restore the recently dead to life.
Other zones might include a lightning zone (everything here gathers immense amounts of static electricity) that can be used to fry foes or power up ancient equipment (that requires the kind of battery charges that just don't exist anymore).
Fossil Zone: everything that sits still here hardens and fossilizes. Only by moving constantly can you keep from merging with the rocky ground beneath you. You'll find statues of people who halted too long and died here. The energy can turn foes to stone or weaken hard stone/metal so that it crumbles away.
Warp Zone: an area of distorted space. All directions seem messed up; you're constantly disoriented. Navigation is very difficult and you may suffer seizures as your own bodily functions try to go the wrong way. People who succumb here are generally turned inside out. Energies gathered here can produce a disorientation effect or a short-distance portal between two areas.