The Empire of Scansinhelm is a gargantuan, environmentally stunning nation, renowned for its compulsory military service and spontaneously combusting cars. The hard-nosed, hard-working population of 19.089 billion Scansinhelmians are free to succeed or fail in life on their own merits; the successful tend to enjoy an opulent (but moralistic) lifestyle, while the failures can be seen crowding out most jails.

The relatively small, moralistic, pro-business government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Defense, and Spirituality. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 10.4%.

The very strong Scansinhelmian economy, worth a remarkable 1,001 trillion Marks a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Basket Weaving industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Trout Farming, and Retail. Average income is 52,477 Marks, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 220,801 per year while the poor average 8,093, a ratio of 27.3 to 1.

All major public areas are watched by police surveillance cameras, euthanasia is illegal, voting is compulsory, and the alarmingly racist TV show 'Bigtopians Say the Darndest Things' is a hit. Crime is moderate, possibly because it is difficult to make it through a day without breaking one of the country's many regulations. Scansinhelm's national animal is the Wolf, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Scansinhelm is ranked 240,617^th in the world and 281^st in KAISERREICH for Lowest Crime Rates, with 54.4 law-abiding acts per hour.