The Protectorate of Spice Harvester 460 is a colossal, orderly nation, notable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, public floggings, and avant-garde cinema. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless, devout population of 8.473 billion Spice Harvester 460ians are ruled by a mostly-benevolent dictator, who grants the populace the freedom to live their own lives but watches carefully for anyone to slip up.

The medium-sized, corrupt, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Industry, Administration, and Education. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 47.6%.

The frighteningly efficient Spice Harvester 460ian economy, worth 893 trillion spices a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is a large, well-organized, broadly diversified black market in Information Technology, Woodchip Exports, Uranium Mining, and Book Publishing. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is an impressive 105,433 spices, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 304,029 per year while the poor average 29,024, a ratio of 10.5 to 1.

The combined alert sound of a nation simultaneously receiving a text message is a common cause of hearing damage, the automobile industry is sitting up and taking notice of the new 24 hour race events... as are the track's sleepless neighbours, murderers and thieves claim divine inspiration to avoid prosecution, and hundreds of teenagers die every year at the Spice Harvester 460ian Hungry Games. Crime, especially youth-related, is a major problem, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Spice Harvester 460's national animal is the sandworm, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Spice Harvester 460 is ranked 67,971^st in the world and 667^th in Jihad Army of the Emperor for Most Patriotic, with 20.69 flags saluted per person per day.