The Lost Weekend of UPC is a mammoth, environmentally stunning nation, ruled by Phoebe with an even hand, and remarkable for its ban on automobiles, smutty television, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, cheerful population of 9.123 billion Radiants are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded morass — juggles the competing demands of Education, Environment, and Industry. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Urithiru. The average income tax rate is 97.5%.

The frighteningly efficient Radiant economy, worth a remarkable 1,176 trillion Diamond Broams a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is extremely specialized, is mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Book Publishing. Average income is an impressive 128,909 Diamond Broams, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Construction of the Really Big Hadron Collider is underway, foreign nations kill migratory animals at random in the hope that UPC will pay them to stop, flu research is commonly shut down for fear of creating a superbug, and excessive wheelchair ramps on government buildings have been compared to theme park attractions. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. UPC's national animal is the Windspren, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is the Church of Honor.

UPC is ranked 86,970^th in the world and 517^th in Europeia for Most Extensive Civil Rights, with 66.17 Martin Luther King, Jr. Units.