The Social Experiment of Syretain is a massive, safe nation, remarkable for its ubiquitous missile silos, public floggings, and flagrant waste-dumping. The hard-nosed, democratic, humorless, devout population of 3.89 billion Syretainians are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The medium-sized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Administration, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Syre. The average income tax rate is 77.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Syretainian economy, worth 595 trillion Tears a year, is fairly diversified and led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with major contributions from Information Technology, Retail, and Book Publishing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is an impressive 153,170 Tears, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.2 times as much as the poorest.

Courses on ornithology and apiology are surprisingly popular, fifteen-year-olds cannot walk younger siblings to school without a professional Childcare and Education Certificate, invasive species are hunted by the gendarmerie, and the police have reaffirmed their tough stance on drugs. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Syretain's national animal is the Axis deer, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Syretain is ranked 12,499^th in the world and 706^th in Lazarus for Most Cultured, scoring 109 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.