Location: Balder

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The Manchester United of Freedom Defense Corps is a gargantuan, devout nation, ruled by General Irwin Hammer IV with an iron fist, and remarkable for its compulsory military service. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 10.145 billion are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt government stops and the rest of society begins, but it devotes most of its attentions to Defence, with areas such as the Environment and Social Equality receiving almost no funds by comparison. It meets every day to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Old Trafford. The average income tax rate is 98%. A powerhouse of a private sector is dominated by the Arms Manufacturing industry.

The government has become increasingly militant, the nation's new foreign policy of 'very disproportionate retribution' has its neighbors on edge, agricultural science is the most competitive subject at Freedom Defense Corps's universities, and motorists must pay to enter inner-cities during peak hours. Crime -- especially youth-related -- is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Freedom Defense Corps's national animal is the Rooney, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its currency is the Credit.

Freedom Defense Corps is ranked 81st in Balder and 3,212th in the world for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring 7 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.

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NationStates by Max Barry, author of and