The Protectorate of Lower Down is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by Lou Underman with an iron fist, and notable for its zero percent divorce rate, compulsory military service, and free-roaming dinosaurs. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 16.067 billion Lower Downians are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources."

The enormous, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Education, and Law & Order. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Rock Bottom. The average income tax rate is 97.3%.

The frighteningly efficient Lower Downian economy, worth a remarkable 4,331 trillion tails a year, is mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Arms Manufacturing, Uranium Mining, Woodchip Exports, and Retail. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an amazing 269,567 tails, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Drunk drivers are sentenced to death, droves of former desperados are applying to join the border police, family isn't who you're born with but who you abandon in foreign countries, and clumsy self-injury is a viable claim in modern compensation culture. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Lower Down's national animal is the bottom crawler, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Down.

Lower Down is ranked 1,218^th in the world and 1^st in The Nether for Most Corrupt Governments, with 440.78 kickbacks per hour.