The Greater Karyun Confederation of Barks Nivvlla is a mammoth, cultured nation, ruled by President Kalyamari Argonica with an iron fist, and renowned for its national health service, vat-grown people, and flagrant waste-dumping. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless population of 5.253 billion Barks are rabid consumers, partly through choice and partly because the government tells them to and dissenters tend to vanish from their homes at night.

The medium-sized, corrupt, well-organized government prioritizes Defense, although Industry, Administration, and Education are also considered important, while Spirituality is ignored. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Waffles. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 93.6%.

The frighteningly efficient Barks economy, worth a remarkable 1,810 trillion Credits 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 Information Technology, Arms Manufacturing, Uranium Mining, and Retail. 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 amazing 344,659 Credits, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 1,048,079 per year while the poor average 88,022, a ratio of 11.9 to 1.

Looting and pillaging are now considered vital intelligence-gathering activities, older citizens lament over the loss of law and order, hammer and sickle-wielding space marines are such stuff that dreams are made on, and space has been brought down to earth with constellations of cancer cases across Barks Nivvlla. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Barks Nivvlla's national animal is the Snow Tunneling Whipping Spider, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Wafflism.

Barks Nivvlla is ranked 322,188^th in the world and 17,153^rd in Lazarus for Highest Unexpected Death Rate, scoring 20.25 on the Bus Surprisal Index.