The Working and Mercantile Sneks of Strala is a titanic, efficient nation, ruled by Ya Yingtan with an iron fist, and renowned for its smutty television, punitive income tax rates, and devotion to social welfare. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 18.412 billion Stralans are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The medium-sized, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government is dominated by the Department of Defense, with Education, Law & Order, and Industry also on the agenda, while Environment and International Aid receive no funds. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Somewhere. The income tax rate is 100%.

The frighteningly efficient Stralan economy, worth an astonishing 12,436 trillion Denarii 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, fairly diversified black market in Arms Manufacturing, Information Technology, and Uranium Mining. 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 a breathtaking 675,440 Denarii, and evenly distributed, with the richest citizens earning only 2.2 times as much as the poorest.

The nation has always been at war with Moltovea, wood-framed catapults are ready to launch diseased corpses into besieged cities, left-wing militias train children how to properly burn down banks, and droves of former desperados are applying to join the border police. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Strala's national animal is the Dragon, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to toxic air pollution, and its national religion is God Snek.

Strala is ranked 332,345^th in the world and 3,198^th in the Pacific for Nicest Citizens, with 0.07 average smiles per day.