The Committee to Nuke Elysium

The Congressional Research Service found that during the Clinton-era shutdowns – which lasted 26 days – veterans’ services all but ceased, the National Park Service shuttered 368 sites, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped disease monitoring and toxic waste clean-up was suspended.

Over 30,000 applications for US visas were stalled each day and 200,000 passport applications sat unattended on desks.

Like all other departments, the State Department will have to determine which of the services it provides in foreign embassies are “essential”, but they would probably shut down or operate on skeleton staffing.

Customs and immigration at US airports and borders however would continue to function.

No new patients were enrolled in clinical research trials at the National Institute of Health, and its disease hotline went unanswered.

Alcohol, tobacco and firearms applications were affected, as were border patrol and law enforcement recruitment, delinquent child support case management and all of the national monuments in Washington DC.

Social security cheques were mailed, but administrators were unable to handle queries about address changes, lost cheques, new enrolees and the like.

This time around, government workers will likely have to shut off their Blackberries. Answering work emails is in contravention of the 1870 act which prohibits the government from receiving free labour.

Employees who try to sneak in some free work could land themselves a $5,000 (£3,118) fine or two years in prison.

Mostly a government shutdown works by furloughing nonessential government workers.

They are usually suspended without pay and later given back pay, even though they had not worked during that period.

That helps contribute to the irony: shutting down the government is expensive.

Fines and fees aren’t collected, the tourism industry suffers from the closure of national parks and employees are ultimately paid for not doing any work.