Location: The North Pacific

Overview • People • Government • Economy • Trend • Analysis

The World-Famous Bar and Grill of Hekik is a massive, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by Rusty Shackleford with a fair hand, and remarkable for its unlimited-speed roads. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, intelligent population of 3.644 billion hold their civil and political rights very dear, although the wealthy and those in business tend to be viewed with suspicion.

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent government stops and the rest of society begins, but it devotes most of its attentions to Education, with areas such as Religion & Spirituality and Law & Order receiving almost no funds by comparison. It meets every day to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Bagley. The average income tax rate is 74%. A powerhouse of a private sector is led by the Book Publishing industry, followed by Information Technology and Tourism.

Police officers are seen patrolling the streets armed with satellite-guided truncheons, morning coffees are no longer the same since the disappearance of newspapers, the government helps teach children how to kill a man from six paces, and the Hekik Enquirer offers weekly cash prizes for 'most blasphemous song, story, or cartoon'. Crime -- especially youth-related -- is a problem, and the police force struggles against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Hekik's national animal is the ape, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its currency is the brat.

Hekik is ranked 2,121st in The North Pacific and 46,710th in the world for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring 1 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.

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NationStates by Max Barry, author of and