The Republic of Thorn234 is a massive, orderly nation, notable for its public floggings, keen interest in outer space, and punitive income tax rates. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless, devout population of 3.306 billion Thorn234ians are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources."

The medium-sized, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Industry. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 54.0%.

The frighteningly efficient Thorn234ian economy, worth 468 trillion francs 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 an enormous, deeply entrenched, broadly diversified black market in Arms Manufacturing, Automobile Manufacturing, Uranium Mining, and Information Technology. 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 141,579 francs, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 587,085 per year while the poor average 22,383, a ratio of 26.2 to 1.

Prison walls have had to be modified to keep parkour-trained criminals from escaping, drill sergeants yell in the ears of bespectacled nerds in cybermilitary "reboot camps", the nation's universities are often mistaken for foreign embassies, and older citizens lament over the loss of law and order. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Thorn234's national animal is the elephant, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Thorn234 is ranked 26,133^rd in the world and 197^th in Suspicious for Most Subsidized Industry, scoring 6,164.4 on the Gilded Widget Scale.