The Dark Sky with Distant Sirens of BEWARE is a colossal, orderly nation, ruled by Hurricane with an iron fist, and renowned for its compulsory military service, zero percent divorce rate, and lack of airports. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 2.911 billion Hurricaneans are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

It is difficult to tell where the omnipresent, corrupt, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government stops and the rest of society begins, but it juggles the competing demands of Environment, Law & Order, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of National Weather Service. The average income tax rate is 90.4%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The strong Hurricanean economy, worth 221 trillion notifications a year, is driven almost entirely by government activity, with private enterprise illegal. However, for those in the know, there is an enormous, deeply entrenched, extremely specialized black market in Arms Manufacturing. The private sector mostly consists of enterprising ten-year-olds selling lemonade on the sidewalk, but the government is looking at stamping this out. State-owned companies are the norm. Average income is 76,169 notifications, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Hospitals have unveiled new guidelines suggesting that latex gloves do not count as clothing, nothing is more offensive than being inoffensive, all writing must pass a censorship board before being allowed on the shelves, and phone taps are frequently carried out by the police. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. BEWARE's national animal is the siren, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Nature.

BEWARE is ranked 301,485^th in the world and 758^th in Horizon for Most Developed, scoring 43.92 on the Human Development Index.