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| Appearance(s): | 28 Days Later (film) 28 Days Later (comic series) |
| Type: | Military blockade |
| Location: | M602, northeast of Manchester |
| Filming location: | |
The Forty-Second Blockade is a military blockade that protected Manchester before it was overrun. It is located on the M602, twenty-seven miles northeast of the city.
History[]
During the Original Outbreak of the Rage Virus, the British Army erected the Forty-Second Blockade on the M602, twenty-seven miles northeast of Manchester, to protect the city against the Infected. An unspecified British Army brigade commanded by Major Henry West was tasked with holding the Forty-Second Blockade, but after Britain was quarantined and the Army began to collapse, the Infected eventually breached and overran the blockade, killing or infecting everyone stationed at it except for Major West and nine of his men. The surviving soldiers abandoned the overrun blockade, and retreated to the Worsley House in the woods nearby.
28 Days Later (film)[]
Thirty-one days after the Rage Virus was released, Jim, Frank, Hannah and Selena followed a radio broadcast made by Major West to the abandoned Forty-Second Blockade. When the group found no signs of surviving soldiers, Frank became disappointed and frustrated, and accidentally caused himself to become infected when he tried to get a crow to leave an infected soldier's corpse. Jim prepared to kill the infected Frank, when two of Major West's surviving men shot and killed Frank, and took the remaining three survivors from the blockade to the Worsley House.
The following day, Jim returned to the Forty-Second Blockade and activated the blockade siren to lure the soldiers to there. Major West and Private Davis arrived at the blockade by jeep and searched the blockade for Jim; and Jim bludgeoned Davis to death with a crowbar, then disabled his and West's jeep and left the Blockade. After killing the Infected drawn to the Blockade by the siren, Major West ran back through the woods from the Blockade to the Worsley House.
Trivia[]
- The Forty-Second Blockade is situated on the M602. However, some of the motorway signs at the blockade indicate that it is situated on or near the M6, which runs to the west of Manchester.It can possibly be the M61 as that has Preston in the north and Manchester in the south.
- M602 is actually a short motorway that runs east wasn't from Manchester city centre through Salford and connects the M62. I believe the actual location of the scene was on the M58, (25 miles north west of Manchester) near Skelmersdale and Wigan.
- The Blockade serves as a MacGuffin plot device in the first 28 Days Later film.
- According to Major Sanders in the 28 Days Later comic series, the Army brigade stationed at the Forty-Second blockade were apparently the last remnant of the British Army to be overrun, implying that the Forty-Second blockade was overrun after the remainder of the Army collapsed.
- The name of the Blockade may be a reference to the Meaning of Life in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as this Blockade is where Major West promised survivors the "Answer to Infection" and in that novel the Meaning of Life is the number Forty-two.
- There is a considerable amount of materiel left abandoned at the Blockade's main site: numerous tents, vehicles, supplies and equipment. Barbed wire was set up and land mines were in the available inventory West had relocated at Worsley House. The British Army must have spared no expense in trying to stop the infected from advancing north to Manchester.
- A helicopter was left abandoned at the blockade by Major West and his men. West and his surviving men were all infantry, so they would not have known how to fly it.