The People's Direct Democracy of New Hydro is a massive, orderly nation, ruled by Great Uki with an iron fist, and renowned for its keen interest in outer space, public floggings, and punitive income tax rates. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 1.892 billion New Hydroans 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 enormous, corrupt, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Law & Order, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Hygrad. The average income tax rate is 75.6%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but sluggish New Hydroan economy, worth 70.5 trillion Ration Cards 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 a large, well-organized, quite specialized black market in Trout Farming, 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 37,251 Ration Cards, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

The nation's atlases tend to go out of date every few weeks, government fact-checkers use surprising amounts of high explosive, many of the unemployed have had the fight taken out of them, and luck is off the table. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. New Hydro's national animal is the 18 Legged Furred Snake, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Cult of Great Uki.

New Hydro is ranked 306,214^th in the world and 118^th in kingdom of Greater Esteriae for Most Developed, scoring 48.75 on the Human Development Index.