(Another billion are lost in the cities which survive.) Once scientists figure out where Sabbat is based, Dredd leads a suicide mission to assassinate him; all the previously-introduced foreign Judges are drafted, backed up by Hondo's Samurai battle armour. He bans Alpha from attending because he is a mutant and a wanted criminal in Mega-City One. Alpha proceeds to knock out Judge Joyce and take Joyce's place aboard Dredd's spaceship, his face concealed by a Samurai visor. Dredd's team are forced to parachute from low orbit into Sabbat's lair, as Sabbat is using his powers to prevent all flying vehicles from working outside the mega-cities. They land in the radioactive Radlands of Ji (in post-nuclear China), where most of them are slaughtered. Judge Bruce dies in Alpha's arms; out of the twenty who started the mission, soon only Dredd, Alpha and Sadu are left, and are taken prisoner. While Sabbat taunts his prisoners about his imminent victory, Sadu manages to escape and release Dredd and Alpha, but sacrifices his life in the process. After a lengthy fight, Dredd and Alpha eventually manage to decapitate Sabbat, and leave him helpless, powerless, but still alive (although a story published three months later reveals he has lost his mind and is reduced to a drooling vegetable). At the moment of Sabbat's defeat, his zombies instantly "switch off" and collapse all over the world at the eleventh hour. In recognition of Alpha's help, Dredd recommends that he be pardoned for his earlier crimes. However they still face a long walk back to civilization through hundreds of miles of radioactive desert populated with hostile mutants and outlaws. Dredd is optimistic about their chances though, saying "Who the "hell's" gonna mess with "us"?" The format made no concessions to those who only bought one publication, as the story was entirely linear, with two episodes a fortnight in the weekly "2000 AD" followed by a third episode in the (then) fortnightly "Megazine". The editors attempted to address this problem in the next two crossovers, "Wilderlands" (1994) and "The Doomsday Scenario" (1999), by having two separate plot threads in each story, one in each comic, so that readers who only bought one could still follow the story. This story features some of the first published artwork from Chris Halls, an early pseudonym of the director Chris Cunningham. The artwork in question was subject to much criticism regarding the similarity in style to Simon Bisley's work.