For decades the US government has had plans to build a deep geological repository for nuclear waste deep under Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, which has been bitterly opposed by the state of Nevada ever since. One such effort was make a square of uninhabited remote desert around the mountain a separate county (Bullfrog County) and increase the property taxes in the county to the highest level allowed by the state constitution (all revenues from which, as the county had no residents, would default to the state government) to dissuade the federal government from building it by imposing a massive tax burden on the property (and, if the repository was built, ensuring it generated a substantial amount of money for the state). If the repository was not built, the land was to be returned to surrounding Nye County and Bullfrog County would de dissolved (all of this was opposed by Nye County, which would be deprived of revenue it would otherwise get, and it was eventually ruled to violate the Nevada constitution because with no residents an elected county government could not be formed). All of this is to say of course that the situation lead to (as the famous "Foot Head Arms Body" is apocryphal) the greatest real newspaper headline ever printed when the Los Angeles Times ran "Bullfrog, Nevada: Empty County to Croak Unless it Goes to Waste."