Malton
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| Malton | |||||
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Motto: Quaeris et nihil reperis | |||||
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| Introduced: | July 3, 2005 | ||||
| Government Type: | Anarchy | ||||
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Malton is the fictional city within which Urban Dead is set. A large area of it has been quarantined after a zombie outbreak.
Malton has a distinctly mid-Atlantic feel; malls seem to be US-style, containing "Liquor Stores," "Drugstores," and "Gun Stores," and police stations go by the American name "police departments", but the pubs have distinctly British names along the lines of "The X Arms." The one hundred suburbs have names from various sources. As the outbreak situation is updated, individual suburbs can range from safe(green) to very dangerous(red).
A general consensus on the unofficial forums, along with some confirmation early in the game's history from Kevan regarding time zones, is that although Malton is US style in layout, it is actually located in England. An alternate theory proposes that Malton is located in English speaking Africa, which would account for the timezone and also for the mix of traditional English businesses alongside gun stores and museums with African art. One problem with believing that Malton is in Africa, is that it snowed on December 10th in Malton. It would be very unlikley that it would snow any place in Africa, unless on top of a high mountain peak.
Two towns named Malton actually exist, one a medium sized town in Yorkshire, England, and one in Ontario, Canada. It is not known if the existence of these has anything to do with the naming of Malton itself. Other possible references to places in Ontario include Richmond Hills, and Buttonville.
History
- The following information is fan-made, and is not officially part of any background history for Urban Dead.
City History
Malton was founded in early 37 A.D. by a group of displaced Welshmen and Scotsmen, driven out of their homes for reasons lost to the mists of time (though the best estimate is tribal land disputes). Driven south by their pursuers, they encountered each other in the misty hills of southwest England on the site of an even older town, and decided to settle there, protecting each other. These were the Ridleigh and Galbraith families, and the town they settled had once belonged to the Marbháin tribe, now gone. Hence began the city of Malton, and all its dark past.
Though the maltons (as the hills were known) housed many small towns all the way up to the 19th century, the city as it is known today was not officially founded until 1820, when several small towns united in an effort to clean up their area, notorious as a slaughterhouse and crime center. The official Founding of the City of Malton was made on July 3rd, 1820, with the signing of the Ridleybank Doctrine by the mayors of the eight central towns in the area- Havercroft, Shore Hills, Barrville, Mockridge Heights, Ridleybank, Galbraith Hills, Stanbury Village, and Shackleville. The Ridleybank Doctrine currently sits in the British Archives, locked away and forgotten, much like the town it founded.
In 1912, the city was partially ruined in the wake of the Great Fire and subsequent rioting by local church groups.
In 1941, it was heavily bombed by German bombers. Although the ruble was cleared, and much of it was rebuilt, some blocks still lie empty. Due to its many factories, it manufactured many tons of ammunition and tent cloths throughout world wars one and two.
Population
Malton was a large city with a population of around 600,000 people on the day of the outbreak (making it the third-largest city in England at the time), which occurred around July 2005. Some believe that some people escaped and left the city before quarantine. However, this is highly unlikely, since the military-imposed quarantine was so sudden; there was no chance to pack up and leave. Exactly three weeks after the outbreak, a military containment force, numbering about 200,000 troops and crew, was sent in to try to eradicate the numerous zombie hordes, but their war was lost before they even arrived. In the first two weeks, it was estimated that at least 50,000 civilians were killed in riots and zombies. About six months after the outbreak, military estimates reported 225,000-300,000 civilian deaths, attributed to zombie attacks, low food supply levels, disease, and gang violence. About 2/3 of the people initially killed were turned into zombies themselves from zombie bites. Also in that six months, about 45% of the military forces that were sent in were reported to be either KIA or MIA. A year since the outbreak, new estimates said that at least 450,000 people, including the military forces, were now dead from the previously listed causes. As of 2008, there are 15,664 survivors remaining.
Trends of Malton's changing population can be seen on the Statistics page.
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Population of Malton |
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Active Characters: 3771 02:20, 30 September 2024 (UTC) |
Climate
Whilst Malton has a relatively damp climate, it has gained an undeserved reputation as a rainy city. The average annual rainfall is 979 mm. Its average annual rainfall total is comparable with that of Central Europe, unusual for the area. Strangely snowfall is not a common sight in the city, due to urban warming, however many roads leading out of the city can be closed due to snow.
Location
- For information on the suburbs located inside Malton, see the Map of Suburbs.
People today are still left in total confusion, not knowing where Malton is in relation to the actual world. Malton lies in a bowl-shaped land area bordered to the north and east by hills. Additionally, along its northern edge adjoining the suburbs Jensentown, Quarlesbank, West Boundwood, and East Boundwood, runs the River Kevan. The City is very unusual, mainly modern, with a planned grid layout. The City itself is square, of the river, hills and protected forestland on it eastern border.
Demographics
In the 2001 census, 87% of people identified themselves as "White", 5.9% as "Indian" or "Pakistani", 2.3% as "Black Caribbean" and 1.4% as "Black African". When it came to religion, 78% were any form of Christianity, 10.1% were atheist/followed no religion 4.9% were believers of Islam, 2% were Jewish and 3% were Hindu. The other 2% were of other religions.
Age demographics in Malton showed a slight lean towards the older end of the population spectrum, as many younger people tended to not find anything of interest in the town, and moved out as soon as they could. Inversely, middle-aged and older citizens found themselves drawn by the town and its rich history, and hence often moved in.
Economy
From its founding in 1820 Malton was and is a primarily industrial city. Sitting as the crown jewel of several steel and textile companies, Malton pre-Outbreak was a linchpin of the Cornish tin industry, the Somerset coal mining, and several points of British steel production. Big names such as Stothert Banking, Harper Chemical, and the massive Woodroffe Steel Corporation, all hung their hats within the city borders, and brought in huge amounts of money for the council to expand.
Malton industry has served an important role in both of the Great Wars since its founding- in the First World War, the Royal Small Arms Company shunted much of their weapons production out of London to Malton to avoid German bombing. From 1915 to the end of the war in 1918, Malton's factories and railway stations hummed with the roar of industry, sending thousands of rifles and cartridges to London and the Continent. In the next great war, Malton once again found itself host to Enfield's works, and also found itself playing host to German bombers tracking the industry as it flowed out from burning London.
Malton's tourism industry has always had erratic highs and lows. The suburb of Peppardville is the central hub for all of Malton's tourist attractions, including Titley Park, though is pockmarked with many low-rent housing plans and projects in the surrounding area, which is a benchmark of the low capital the city's tourist industry brought in. At a few peak times tourism has been very profitable in Malton, however, and several attractions were able to remain profitable up until the outbreak.
Though largely industrial, Malton was hit hard by the collapse of the Cornish tin industry and the English coal industry in the 1980s, which (hitting right after the Energy Crisis of the latest 1970s) nearly destroyed the city. As a forced result of the collapse, much of the city center tranformed from secondary industry to tertiary industry- rather, from manufacturing to service jobs. By the time of the outbreak in 2005, though the Malton skyline was still dotted with the towers and chimneys of factories and peaked roofs of warehouses (and though the Dot-Com Bubble collapse in 2001 hit the industry across the knees once again), the predominant shapes were those of the ubiquitous office blocks of clerical work.
Culture
After the decline of the heavy industries of the 20th century, Malton council wanted to change the city's image. It was designated to be a cultural center, with a large amount of public museums and art galleries.
Crime
Malton's crime rate was quite high before the outbreak. There were several organized criminal groups in the southern suburbs, which supposedly had contacts with other organizations from America, Morocco and Chicago. Several mafias, assassination squads, and terrorist organizations ran loose in Malton. However, the most illegal events were unorganized, chaotic and very violent. There were several instances well before the outbreak where martial law was temporarily imposed in the city and elements of nearby military forces were sent in to aid Malton police.
Border
Known by most inhabitants of Malton as Quarantine Zone, the border area that has surrounded the map of Malton has been established since the threat of an outbreak. This desolate territory is utter suicide for both Survivor or Zombie that attempts to cross it.
The border is mostly just the area of surrounding city that was once part of Malton, but was then leveled and occupied by the Army in order to keep people out and zombies -and survivors- in. The soldiers stationed around Malton take special precautions that nothing crosses this zone.
In places around Malton, the actual old city walls- that is, the medieval walls that were built around Malton back in medieval times and maintained as historic landmarks- have been incorporated into the Quarantine Zone's design. In other places, entirely new walls have been erected. Contingents of soldiers patrol both old and new walls day and night, manning the spotting towers, machine-gun posts, and flame turrets. But in some places no wall exists, either due to the terrain or the needs of the area. These places are possibly even more heavily defended than the walls- the obstacles include long lines of razorwire, land mines, anti-vehicle barriers, and napalm trenches, accompanied by manned machinegun emplacements that target anyone or anything that tries to cross the border.
Monroeville
By the time of the first known outbreak in the United States (seemingly unconnected to either the first Malton outbreak or the supposed culprits of that epidemic, NecroTech), the American military had been taking observational data on British procedures for almost three years, and as a result the cordoning off of the Monroeville area was far less messy than the British quarantine.
No large scale military attempt was made to combat the zombies- rather, the U.S. Army simply marked off a line on the map and set up shop. While the outbreak was still in its early stages, the Army had already split the town into two and arranged a massive cordon across local fields and thick bands of woodland. Small sorties have been sent in occasionally to try and gather data, but some did not return.
The U.S. barricade system is similar to the British one in Malton, except that the U.S. had no medieval walls to work with. The line was originally a simple riot barricade and was updated over the first week- construction on the final version of the line, resembling more fully the well-established British Quarantine Zone, is expected to be completed in late March or early April. As it stands the Monroeville Quarantine Zone is strong largely due to the extra contingents of soldiers patrolling it rather than the elaborate automated defense systems and trench layers of Malton, but to quote the official Department of Defense report, "As of the seventh of March no entity of any kind has managed to escape the Monroeville cordon."
