The Loner in a Catastrophic Mind of Armatage Shanks is a titanic, efficient nation, ruled by Billie Joe Armstrong with an even hand, and renowned for its avant-garde cinema, enslaved workforce, and absence of drug laws. The hard-nosed population of 19.807 billion Armatage Shanksians 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 large government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Education, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of 86. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 64.1%.

The all-consuming Armatage Shanksian economy, worth a remarkable 1,603 trillion somethings a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is broadly diversified, is led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Information Technology, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. Average income is 80,952 somethings, with the richest citizens earning 7.9 times as much as the poorest.

The Gallery of Instasnap is the most popular museum in the country, all government communication requires the imprimatur of the Truth Police, drug lords often avoid prison time by teaching "chemistry" classes to underprivileged youth, and bins outnumber trees in city parks. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Armatage Shanks's national animal is the something else, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Armatage Shanks is ranked 124,859^th in the world and 1,046^th in the Rejected Realms for Highest Poor Incomes, with 26,133.82 Standard Monetary Units.