The People's Republic of Strachostan is a massive, orderly nation, ruled by Sergei Volkov with an iron fist, and remarkable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, sprawling nuclear power plants, and devotion to social welfare. The hard-nosed, cynical population of 2.47 billion Strachostanis 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 large, corrupt, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Education. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Strachograd. The average income tax rate is 70.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The very strong Strachostani economy, worth 225 trillion redens 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 black market in Arms Manufacturing, Information Technology, Door-to-door Insurance Sales, and Beef-Based Agriculture. 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 91,283 redens, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.3 times as much as the poorest.

Promising seven years of bad luck leads to seven years of community service, nine out of ten citizens of Strachostan answered 'nuclear safety inspector' when asked their occupation, fashion models are guaranteed to be 100% genuinely as anorexic as they appear on magazine covers, and the question "please would you...?" is usually laden with passive aggression. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Strachostan's national animal is the honey bee, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Strachostan is ranked 47,074^th in the world and 1,187^th in the Rejected Realms for Most Subsidized Industry, scoring 4,126.16 on the Gilded Widget Scale.