The Watchfires of Wood-20 is a gargantuan, environmentally stunning nation, renowned for its soft-spoken computers, absence of drug laws, and punitive income tax rates. The hard-nosed, humorless population of 20.777 billion Wood-20ians 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 enormous government juggles the competing demands of Law & Order, Industry, and Administration. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 66.0%.

The powerhouse Wood-20ian economy, worth a remarkable 1,472 trillion $$s a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is a slick, highly efficient, quite specialized black market in Automobile Manufacturing, Uranium Mining, Arms Manufacturing, and Furniture Restoration. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. Average income is 70,850 $$s, with the richest citizens earning 9.9 times as much as the poorest.

Fancy dress parties are raided by military police for new recruits, Red Cross demand for body bags is rising while sutures go unused, Leader claims tax rises are the result of 'curses', and environmental protestors are being rounded up and taken away in sinister black vans as a massive land development campaign gets underway. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Wood-20's national animal is the swordfish, which frolics freely in the nation's sparkling oceans.

Wood-20 is ranked 58,469^th in the world and 1^st in Laptev Sea for Lowest Crime Rates, with 72.11 law-abiding acts per hour.