I think we need to change this to "goes Dystopian without a major natural disaster or large-scale use of WMDs", because "total thermonuclear war" or "giant meteor strike" leads to "everyone in my country dead", which is pretty much as dystopian as you get (I don't believe in "1984" -type perfect eternal dictatorships - at least with current technology!)
Bruce
You sure about 1984? The only thing I can think of that we don't ahve that they do is the two-way televisions. Maybe the floating fortress things, but it doesn't really mention enough to say much on that subject.