The paper examines blow-up phenomena for the inequality \renewcommand{\theequation}{*} \begin{equation} u_t - Lu - \vert u \vert^{q-1} u \leqslant v_t - Lv - \vert v \vert^{q-1}v \end{equation} in the half-space ${\bb R}^1_+ \times {\bb R}^n,\; n \geqslant 1$ , where $L$ is a linear second-order partial differential operator in divergence form.

The paper studies weak solutions of (*) that belong only locally to the corresponding Sobolev spaces in the half-space ${\bb R}^1_+ \times {\bb R}^n$ . It also requires no conditions for the behavior of solutions of (*) on the hyperplane $t = 0$ .

The existence of critical blow-up exponents is obtained for solutions of (*) as a special case of a comparison principle for the corresponding solutions of (*). For example, the well-known Fujita result is a consequence of the comparison principle.

The approach developed in the paper is directly applicable to the study of analogous problems involving nonlinear differential operators. Its elliptic analogue has been recently developed by the authors.