Tensions
In an overcrowded city like Mega-City One, tensions and rivalry between neighbouring city blocks are inevitable and, very occasionally, these feelings spill over into full-scale wars. As each city block is an independent unit in its own right, a sense of patriotism is often attached to them by their residents and wars can break out with "enemy blocks" over the most trivial matters. For the Judges, a Block War is one of the toughest situations to police, simply because there are usually so many people involved and arrests generally have to be made in vast numbers before things can be properly cooled down and peace restored.
In 2104 block wars were used by East-Meg One as a precursor to nuclear attack and then invasion - the madness, which came to be known as 'Block Mania', was caused by a drug added to the Mega-City One water supply by Orlok, the East-Meg One assassin. By the time an antidote was created from the captured assassin's blood, the city was effectively crippled fighting itself - with infected Judges even taking block sides.
Until 2130, genetic mutants were exiled from the city. However in that year the law was changed to allow them to live in the city, but they were housed in a segregated "Mutie Block." This Block was attacked by an organised, armed mob, causing substantial loss of life.
Read more about this topic: City Block (Judge Dredd)
Famous quotes containing the word tensions:
“It is just possible that the tensions in a novel of murder are the simplest and yet most complete pattern of the tensions on which we live in this generation.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“The three of them are enveloped
turning now to go crosstown in their
sense of each other, of pleasure,
of weather, of corners,
of leisurely tensions between them
and private silence.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)